By a mere accident, we discovered a remarkable medicinal property of the glutinous secretion of the seed-vessels of a drooping Grevillea.  John Murphy, having no pockets in his trowsers, put the seeds which he found during the stage into his bosom, close to the skin, where he had already deposited a great number of Sterculia, and was much inconvenienced by the starry prickles which surround the seeds.  Afterwards, finding the drooping Grevillea in fruit, he gathered some capsules and placed them as before stated.  Upon arriving at the camp, he felt great pain; and, on examining the place, he saw, to his greatest horror, that the whole of the skin of the epigastric region was coloured black, and raised into a great number of painful blisters.  Upon his showing it to me, I thought that it was caused by the Sterculia prickles having irritated the skin, and rendered it more sensitive to the sharp properties of the exudation of the seed-vessels of Grevillea.  Brown, however, merely touched the skin of his arm with the matter, when blisters immediately rose; showing clearly its properties.  The discoloration of the skin was like the effects of nitrate of silver.

Sept. 24.—­When Charley returned with the horses from a higher part of the river, he told us that he had seen so many wallabies and such numerous tracks of emus and crocodiles, that I sent John and Brown to procure some game.  They returned with only a red wallabi (Halmaturus agilis) and a spoonbill.  According to their account, the river enlarged into an immense sandy bed, like that of the Lynd, and was covered with trees and shrubs, very much resembling those of that river.  Its course was from the westward; and in that direction large plains extended.  They had seen three crocodiles, one of which lay in the shade of a Sarcocephalus tree.  The bean of the Mackenzie grew plentifully along the river, and was covered with ripe seeds.  In the morning of the 25th, I sent John and Brown to collect as many of them as they could, for coffee; whilst I and Charley went to reconnoitre the country for water.  A W.N.W. course brought us so much into sandstone ranges, gullies, and heads of creeks, that we turned to the northward, until we came again into the open box and tea-tree forest, mixed with bloodwood and gum.  About four miles from the camp, we found water-holes supplied by springs, and which had just been left by the natives, who were busy in burning the grass along the ridges, and on the fine intervening flats.  It was here that I again met with a species of Banksia, on the sandy flats immediately below the sandstone ranges, which was either a variety of B. integrifolia, or a species very nearly allied to it.  We found it afterwards all over Arnheim’s Land, especially on the table land and on the rocky heads of the South Alligator River, where it grew on sandy flats surrounding the rocks, and particularly round sandy swamps.  The Cypress-pine and Pandanus were frequent, but Sterculia was rare.  We remarked that the little finches generally anticipated us in the harvest of the ripe fruit of the latter.  About eight miles from the springs, after crossing a great number of small dry sandy watercourses, we came to a fine creek with two large Nymphaea ponds.