thickness, like the East Indian Rotang-palm, creeps through the
woods for hundreds of feet, twining round trees in its path,
and at times forming so dense a wattle that it is impossible to
get through it. The stem and leaves are studded with the
sharpest 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 on
a mass of `lawyer-vines' (<i>Calamus Australis</i>)."

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. The
thorns 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 the
lawyer-vines where they are not burnt off. These are a form of
palm which grows in feathery tufts along a pliant stalk, and
fastens itself as a creeper upon other trees. From beneath its
tufts of leaves it throws down trailing suckers of the
thickness of stout cord, armed with sets of sharp red barbs.
These suckers sometimes throw themselves from tree to tree
across a road which has not been lately used, and render it as
impassable to horses as so many strains of barbed wire. When
they merely escape from the undergrowth of wild ginger and
tree-fern and stinging-bush, which fringes the scrub, and coil
themselves in loose loops upon the ground, they are dangerous
enough as traps for either man or horse. In the jungle, where
they weave themselves in and out of the upright growths, they
form a web which at times defies every engine of destruction
but fire."

<hw>Lawyer-Cane</hw>, <hw>Lawyer-Palm</hw>, and
<hw>Lawyer-Vine</hw>. See <i>Lawyer</i>.

<hw>Lead</hw>, <i>n</i>. (pronounced <i>leed</i>), a mining
term. In the Western United States and elsewhere, the term
lead in mining is used as equivalent for lode. In Australia,
the word <i>lead</i> is only used in reference to alluvial
mining, and signifies the old river-bed in which gold is found.

1875. `Spectator' (Melbourne), June 19, p. 75, col. 2:

"There was every facility for abstracting the gold in the rich
le