Besides the _Banksia_,[28] or honeysuckles, the _Boronias_, _Epacris grandiflora_, with its elegant pendent blossoms, and two species of _Kennedia_,[29] one bearing red and the other small blue flowers entwined over the shrubs in their vicinity; the other golden and fragrant flowers of the _Acacias_ (of which genus the colony possesses a large number of indigenous species) gave an additional beauty to the otherwise arid character of the vegetation; the _Xylomelum pyriforme_, or wooden pear-tree, so called from its exceedingly hard woody fruits, is seen abundant in the vicinity of Sydney, several are seen from thirty to thirty-five feet in elevation, and two feet in circumference. A splendid _Bignonia_ overspread the rocks, decked with its pendulous clusters of tinted blossoms; and two large and parisitical _Dendrobiums_, in full flower, adorned the rough trunk of one of the eucalyptus tribe to which it had attached itself for sustenance; and the different species of _Grevillea_, _Leptospermum_, _Pimelia_, _Lambertia_, _Crowea_, and a number of others, added to the animated appearance of the soil. On the north shore the shrubs and plants, now in full flower, were more abundant; the arid soil was brilliant with the variety of tints emanating from them, combining to charm the eye with their beauty, but were destitute of that agreeable fragrance for which the flowers of European climes are so highly esteemed. On the _Leptospermum_ I remarked an insect, or rather the larva of some Coleopterous insect, pending from a sprig and enclosed in a case of a woven substance, strengthened externally by bits of twigs; the insect to which this larva belongs is unknown to me, nor have I been able to see it described in any entomological work; the only publication in which I have seen it mentioned, is in the catalogue of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, part 4, fasc. 1. “Preparations of Natural History in Spirit,” page 117, No. 438. “Larva of a Coleopterous Insect in its Case.”