president's address. 557 



In the early part of the year the Hon. J. L. Parsons, Minister 

 for the Northern Territory, accompanied by Professor Ralph Tate? 

 F.G.S., and others, paid an official visit to the Territory. Mr. 

 Parsons considers that Port Darwin will be the key to the whole 

 of Northern Australia. It contains agricultural lands which* 

 though of limited extent, are suited for the growth of sugarcane, 

 maize, rice, and other tropical plants. And in the interior are 

 extensive pasture-lands. 



Professor Tate, in his official report, points out that the rice 

 plant is indigenous to the Northern Territory, as are also the 

 Tamarind and one other useful plant, the Tacca pinnatifida, from 

 the tubers of which the main supply of Fiji arrowroot is prepared. 

 He further mentions "that tropica] South Australia has been 

 truly said to be a land of grasses ; the number of known species is 

 about 130- and of these he collected over 50, between the Adelaide 

 River and Pine Creek. But only some four or five are con- 

 stituents of the grass plains and adjacent hill slopes. Some flats 

 are almost exclusively occupied with Anthistiria, or with 

 Andropogon triticeus, or with another congeneric species, whilst not 

 infrequently the three are found in company. The two latter 

 grasses acquire on the fiats a height of from 6 to 8 feet, and 

 exceptionally attain to 1 4 feet ; but on dry hill slopes the same 

 species dwindle down to 2 feet or less. The exuberant growth of 

 grasses in the plains of the basin of the Northern Rivers should 

 be capable of keeping alive large herds of cattle. 



" The character of the landscape, as far as it depends upon trees, 

 shrubs, and grasses, presents along the whole route very little 

 variation ; and it is only by the margins of some of the sluggish 

 water-courses that the vegetation assumes a tropical aspect, 



" In the jungles, always of limited area, such as at Famine Bay, 

 near Palmerston, at Rum Jungle, at the Stapleton, and those on 

 the margins of some of the tributaries of the McKinlay River, 

 there abound bamboos, reaching to 40 feet and 60 feet high, 

 screw-pines, umbrageous fig trees, tall eucalyptus, and the paper- 

 bark melaleuca or tea-tree, amongst which climb certain con- 

 volvulaceaa, true vines, sarsaparilla vine, &c. The rest of the 



