14 Voijage of the Novara. 



and Burke, have made also important discoveries in the in- 

 terior ; and in view of the impulse which the lamentable state 

 of American politics threatens to imj^art to cotton-growing 

 everywhere, the highly fertile banks of the Murray, which 

 with a very little labour might be made navigable far into 

 the interior, may at no distant period be covered with numer- 

 ous cotton plantations. 



While the younger and more adventurous spirits enter 

 with, all their heart and soul upon these dangerous ex- 

 periences of rude hardship, there is in the capital of the 

 colony a not less marked scientific vitality, and the valuable 

 libraries and private collections of the Governor-general, Sir 

 Wm. Denison, Mr. W. Macleay, the botanist. Dr. George Ben- 

 nett, physician and geologist,* Dr. Roberts, microscopist, 

 Messrs. W. B. Clarke and Selwyn, geologists, as well as 

 their various and valuable contributions to science, exercise 

 a doubly important and beneficial influence upon a number 

 of contiguous states so peculiarly organized as those of Aus- 

 tralia, which, first penal settlements, and tlien gold-fields, 

 seemed to have been deprived of all those favourable con- 

 ditions, which elsewhere are usually supposed to be requisite 

 for the development of intellectual and scientific activity. 



easily get over 60 to 80 miles per diem, and can moreover dispense with water for 

 weeks together. 



* During a visit which our naturalists paid to Dr. Bennett they were shown a young 

 pair of the Morok [Casuariiis Bennetti), discovered not long since at New Britain, which 

 he intended to present to the Zoological Society of London for exhibition at the Re- 

 gent's Park. What is very remarkable in this singular bird is the shape of the bill, 

 which is curved in the male, but almost straight in the female. 



