n.
One of the English provincial usesof this word is for a thorny stem of a briar or bramble. InNew Zealand, the name is used in this sense for the Rubusaustralis, N.O. Rosaceae, or Wild Raspberry-Vine(Maori, Tataramoa). The words Bush-Lawyer, Lawyer-Vine, and Lawyer-Palm, are used with thesame signification, and are also applied in some colonies tothe Calamus australis, Mart. (called also Lawyer-Cane), and to Flagellaria indua, Linn,, similartrailing plants.
1865. Rev. J. E. Tenison-Woods, `History of the Discoveryand Exploration of Australia,' vol. ii. p. 157:
« Calamus Australis, a plant which Kennedy now saw forthe first time. . . It is a strong climbing palm. From theroots as many as ninety shoots will spring, and they lengthenout as they climb for hundreds of feet, never thicker than aman's finger. The long leaves are covered with sharp spines;but what makes the plant the terror of the explorers, is thetendrils, which grow out alternately with the leaves. Many ofthese are twenty feet long, and they are covered with strongspines, curved slightly downwards.»
1867. F. Hochstetter, `New Zealand,' p. 135:
« Rubus Australis, the thorny strings of which scratchthe hands and face, and which the colonists, therefore, verywittily call the `bush-lawyer.'»
1882. T. H. Potts, `Out in the Open,' p. 71:
«Torn by the recurved prickles of the bush-lawyer.»
1889. Vincent Pyke, `Wild Will Enderby,' p. 16:
«Trailing `bush-lawyers,' intermingled with coarse bracken,cling lovingly to the rude stones.»
1890. C. Lumholtz, `Among Cannibals,' p. 103:
«In the mountain scrubs there grows a very luxuriant kind ofpalm ( Calamus Australis), whose stem of a finger'sthickness, like the East Indian Rotang-palm, creeps through thewoods for hundreds of feet, twining round trees in its path,and at times forming so dense a wattle that it is impossible toget through it. The stem and leaves are studded with thesharpest thorns, which continually cling to you and draw blood,hence its not very polite name of lawyer-palm.»
1891. A. J. North, `Records of Australian Museum,' vol. i.p. 118:
«Who, in the brushes of the Tweed River, found a nest placed ona mass of `lawyer-vines' ( Calamus Australis).»
1892. Gilbert Parker, `Round the Compass in Australia,'p. 256:
«`Look out,' said my companion, `don't touch that lawyer-vine;it will tear you properly, and then not let you go.' Too late;my fingers touched it, and the vine had the best of it. Thethorns upon the vine are like barbed spears, and they would,in the language of the Yankee, tear the hide off a crocodile.»
1892. `The Times,' [Reprint] `Letters from Queensland,' p. 7:
«But no obstacle is worse for the clearer to encounter than thelawyer-vines where they are not burnt off. These are a form ofpalm which grows in feathery tufts along a pliant stalk, andfastens itself as a creeper upon other trees. From beneath itstufts of leaves it throws down trailing suckers of thethickness of stout cord, armed with sets of sharp red barbs.These suckers sometimes throw themselves from tree to treeacross a road which has not been lately used, and render it asimpassable to horses as so many strains of barbed wire. Whenthey merely escape from the undergrowth of wild ginger andtree-fern and stinging-bush, which fringes the scrub, and coilthemselves in loose loops upon the ground, they are dangerousenough as traps for either man or horse. In the jungle, wherethey weave themselves in and out of the upright growths, theyform a web which at times defies every engine of destructionbut fire.»