622 



NOTES ON THE NATIVE FLORA OF NEW SOUTH 



WALES. 



By R. H. Cambage, F.L.S. 



Part ix. Barraba to Nandewar Mountains and Boggabri. 



(Plates Ixvi.-lxvii.) 



The notes for this paper were obtained during a short visit to 

 the locality in November, 1909, and although many small plants 

 were doubtless overlooked, sufficient were noticed to enable a 

 good general impression of the character of the vegetation to be 

 formed. One of the chief features of interest of the locality, 

 from a geographical standpoint, is that, although the Nandewar 

 Mountains are situated about 90 miles west of the Great Dividing 

 Range, and are connected with New England by the Nandewar 

 Range, which is in places a comparatively low spur, yet they 

 reach an altitude of about 5,000 feet above sea-level, an elevation 

 only exceeded in a few instances in New South Wales, outside 

 the Kosciusko and surrounding area. It is this elevation, and 

 partial isolation, which give additional interest to the locality 

 from a botanical point of view, for the increased height enables 

 plants to flourish thei'e, which would otherwise be absent from 

 the district; while the isolation makes it both difficult and inter- 

 esting to account for some of the species being there at all. 



The Nandewar Mountains were discovered by Surveyor- 

 General Oxley on the 8th August, 1818, when on his exploratory 

 journey easterly from the Macquarie River to Port Macquarie. 

 As an evidence of their comparative height, and the generally 

 lower nature of the intervening country, they were first seen and 

 named from a distance of upwards of one hundred miles. Oxley 

 had just previously discovered the Warrumbungle Mountains, 

 which he named Arbuthnot's Range, and he writes, that when 

 standing on Mount Exmouth, the highest point of the Warrum- 



