and a flower which children call "kangaroo foot," (being shaped like one,) the right name of which is marsupia mirabilis. In the latter end of the winter months it was a great pleasure to set aside some particular afternoon for the purpose of taking a party of children into the bush to gather everlastings, and to drink tea out of doors. The favourite spot was Mount Douraking, where we could sit and watch the effect of sunset over the vast forest, whilst the half-dozen children whom we had taken with us, Binnahan as eager as the rest, ran about, remaining out of sight until they could reappear in triumph upon a high mass of rock above us, with their arms full of rose-coloured flowers.
In many bush huts, when the women have a taste for decoration, pink everlastings are tied up in thick bunches and inserted in a close compact row between the top of the hut wall and the sloping edge of the uncoiled rafters, so as to form a cornice, beautiful in itself, and also in picturesque harmony with the rude materials of the dwellings.
It need scarcely be said that the season of the flowers is the pleasantest time either for riding or driving in the bush, and perhaps the forest was never more attractive than in the month of July, when each individual red gum-tree looked like an enormous flowering myrtle, and was covered to its very summit with white blossoms. But at that period of mid-winter the days were short and the roads were in many places full of miry holes, and we therefore preferred to postpone our distant excursions until the flowers upon the trees were fading and those upon the ground were in perfection. It was a matter of some surprise to us, at first, that large portions of the roads should
