These Miserable Little
Wretches Seem Always On The Watch To Claw Hold Of Something, And If You Are
Unhappy Enough To Be Caught, And Attempt To Disengage Yourself By
Struggling, Fresh Tendrils Appear Always To Lurk In Ambush, Ready To Assist
Their Companion, Who Already Holds You In His Grasp.
I have measured the
length of one of these canes, and found it over 250 paces; and this is
Not
the maximum to which they attain, for I have been assured by men employed
in cutting a telegraph road through the scrub that they had found some over
300 yards long. They seem to retain the same circumference throughout
their whole length, and, as the bushman puts everything to some use, the
lawyer is divested of his husk, and takes the place of wire in fencing,
being rove through the holes bored in the posts as though they were ropes.
It is almost needless to add that this cane derives its 'soubriquet' of
"lawyer" from the difficulty experienced in getting free if once caught in
its toils.
Another of the torments to which the traveller is subjected in the North
Australian scrubs, is the stinging-tree ('Urtica gigas'), which is very
abundant, and ranges in size from a large shrub of thirty feet in height to
a small plant measuring only a few inches. Its leaf is large and peculiar,
from being covered with a short silvery hair, which, when shaken, emits a
fine pungent dust, most irritating to the skin and nostrils.
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