of the natives. The cliffs we passed on this day's journey were very curious, they were about twenty or thirty feet from the water, and consisted of perfectly horizontal layers of a clay resembling chalk in appearance, but composed of decayed pumice, with occasional intervening layers of a black vegetable substance evidently passing into coal. One of the seams was about a foot thick, it was the under one, but had no consistency, and when pressed it crumbled in the hand so as to discover its component parts, which were leaves, twigs, and seed-vessels of plants now forming the flowers of the island; this must be as recent a coal formation as may be seen in any part of the world. The natives said that they used it as fuel, but they cannot do so to any extent, as the trouble of procuring it would be greater than would be required to get wood, owing to its situation, at or rather below the edge of high-water mark.
Friday, March 30th.—Our road to-day lay over a range of mountains called the Arrohaw; the ascent on this, the eastern side, is gradual, but in many places on the other side almost a wall; the whole range was thickly wooded, denoting a very good quality of land. I here first saw the great Dracophyllum; it formed a small tree about six inches in diameter, and twenty feet high; it is one of the most curious plants in the world; the leaves grow in tufts at the ends of the branches, just as in the dragon tree (Dracæna), and are the same shape, but in this species they are elegantly reflexed, like the feathers of a soldier's plume; they are a foot long and an inch broad at the base. The bunches of flowers (which I did not see, the plant being in seed) are, I believe, white; as large as moderate bunches of grapes, and of the same shape. I have very little doubt that it would grow out of doors in England, but could not succeed in getting any ripe seed. I also saw here for the first time the gigantic tree fern (Mummuke), the young fronds of which are
