CAPPARIDES.  At least ten species of Capparis have been discovered upon the coasts of Terra Australis, for the most part within the tropic, but of these the fructification of two are wanting.  A few have been detected on the East Coast, but they are more frequent and various in their species upon the north-western shores of the continent.  Within an area on this extensive coast, not exceeding four degrees of longitude, on the parallel of 15 degrees South, a tree of very remarkable growth and habit, has been traced, having all the external form and bulk of Adansonia of the western shores of Africa.  At the respective period of visiting those parts of the North-west Coast, this gouty tree had previously cast its foliage of the preceding year, which is of quinary insertion, but it bore ripe fruit, which is a large elliptical pedicellated unilocalar capsule (a bacca corticosa) containing many seeds enveloped in a dry pithy substance.  Its flowers, however, have never been discovered, but from the characters of the fruit, it was (upon discovery) referred to this natural family.  M. Du Petit Thouars has formed a new genus of Capparis pauduriformis of Lamarck, a plant of the Island of Mauritius, which he has named Calyptranthus.  It has one division of the calyx so formed, that by its arcuated concavity (before expansion) it conceals the whole flower, and the other portions of the calyx; and should this genus be adopted by future botanists, a second species has been recently discovered upon Dirk Hartog’s Island, although of remarkably different habit.

Cleome has been observed only in the equinoctial parts of Australia, and like Capparis, several species exist on the North-west Coast, being limited to C. viscosa in New South Wales.

Drosera, which Jussieu associates with these genera is generally diffused, being found within the tropic, at Endeavour River, and on the North-west Coast; at Port Jackson, and at the southern extremes of Van Diemen’s Land.

DILLENIACEAE.  To that Australian portion of the order lately enumerated by M. Decandolle, the present Herbarium offers, in addition, only two species of the genus Hemistemma of M. Du Petit Thouars.  The one discovered on the North-west Coast, and allied to H. angustifolium of Mr. Brown; the other proving also new, but approaching in character the doubtful species, H. leschenaultii of Decandolle, and was discovered upon Rottnest Island, off the western coast of the continent, and is the first certain species of the genus, that is not limited to a tropical existence.

In addition to what has been advanced in respect to certain natural orders that appear in the Herbarium, formed under the stated circumstances, a slight mention might be made of other detached genera, or families sparingly observed on these coasts, that were more particularly investigated during the progress of the late voyages; but as these several plants form portions of orders so extremely limited, and in themselves presenting nothing remarkable in their internal structure, or external habit, a few remarks on a general comparison of the vegetation of the North-west Coast, with the other shores of Terra Australis, will conclude this notice.