president's address. 23 



less plains and ridges, sank so far into the soil, that the deeply 

 cut tracks often remained for years, useful guides to later 

 travellers. 



Dr. Woolls, in his "Plants of the Darling," says: "When, 

 in 1865, Mr. E. Ford was surveying in that district, he wrote 

 that it was quite impossible to find a moist spot on the Dar- 

 ling, everything being dry, parched and burnt up, whilst the 

 ground was cracked in all directions with deep fissures." 



The rapidity with which, even after heavy rains, the clay- 

 pans, swamps, and marshes dried up in the interior, was 

 startling to the traveller. Many of our large inland lakes 

 and swamps, which have been permanent sheets of water for 

 the last forty years, were, in the early days of settlement, 

 only sheets of water through the winter and spring, and were 

 quite dry long before the end of summer. This is evident 

 from the fact, that there are many of these swamps and 

 lakes, even at the present time, surrounded with a frings of 

 gaunt, dead skeletons of gum-trees, many of which must have 

 been very old trees before the altered conditions came about, 

 and they were killed by the accumulated water. The Kow 

 Swamp, in the north of Victoria, is an example of this ; from 

 the present low-water mark at the end of summer, hundreds 

 of dead, bleached red-gums encircle the clear water as far 

 in as the low-water mark of olden times ; while outward, to 

 the high-water mark, the large red-gums grow with all their 

 usual vigour. This swamp was perfectly dry in the great 

 drought of 1865, but since the floods of 1870, it has been a 

 permanent sheet of water, with an average depth of 2-3 feet 

 at the end of the summer. 



Not only did the stocking improve the pasturage, but the con- 

 stant padding of the soil by the feet of the cattle, horses, and 

 sheep, puddled the soil, so that the beds of the clay-pans, water- 

 holes, creeks, and swamps, which previously had retained the sur- 

 face-water for a very short time after rain, became so hardened 

 and puddled, that the water became more or less permanent. The 

 habit of sheep in following each other in strings, gives rise to 



