456 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION D. 
only eminence that has any claim to be called a mount in the 
whole north-west territory. Low ranges of sand-hills, covered 
with scrub and porcupine grass, are the nearest approach to hills, 
and these for the most part trend from south-east to north-west. 
One of those strips of useless country, a spur of the South 
Australian 90-mile desert, which extends in an unbroken line 
due east to the Wimmera River, is called the “ Little Desert,” 
as a distinction from the Great Desert, which is another spur 
running nearly parallel to it some miles further north. One of 
those scrubby ranges of low hills above referred to nearly connects 
these two strips about half way between the Wimmera and the 
South Australian Border, and this is known as the Lawloit 
Range. Red sandstone and a conglomerate rock of iron-stone 
nodules embedded in sandstone abounds om those ranges. In 
many places extensive tracts of limestone exist, usually in con- 
junction with iron-stone. Close to Mount Arapiles are several 
large salt lakes, and in the northern parts large quantities of 
gypsum exist, either as a white dry powder piled up in hillocks, 
or as a solid, in the form of transparent flakes. The swamps 
may be only regarded as such in wet seasons, and are nearly 
always dry ; but within the last six or seven years most of them 
got full to overflowing, and are now nearly all dry again. What 
is regarded as the best agricultural land consists of the so-called 
crab-holey plains, the soil being of a very clayey nature, thrown 
up into low mounds. the depressions between being usually full 
of water in the winter time, and of low loamy rises, with here 
and there a few isolated sand-dunes covered with cypress pines 
and scrub. Approaching the desert country, the soil is much of 
the same clayey nature; but instead of being comparatively open 
country, is for the most part thickly clothed with mallee scrub, 
composed of various species of Eucalyptus, as well as other genera, 
such as Dodonea, &c. The farmers have taken possession of this 
fringe, and nearly the whole of it has been rolled down and put 
under crop. As we get further in, the soil changes for the worst, 
till at length we enter the desert proper, which has already been 
described. Such is a brief description of the district to which 
this paper alludes, and which is meant to convey to the reader an 
idea of the nature of the various soils in which the plants flourish, 
and the conditions under which they exist. 
Taking the belt of good land first, we find that on the crab- 
holey plains many plants exist which are not to be found any- 
where else, namely, Swainsona procumbens and S. phacoides side 
by side with the yellow-blossomed Zygophyllum glaucescens, 
Sida corrugata, Ptilotus exaltatus, Kuphorbia Drummondit, 
Kochia villosa, Kochia microphylla, Atriplex halimoides, A. semi- 
baccatum, Bassia bicornis, Mimulus gracilis, may be found, eome 
on the hardest and driest patches and others, particularly Mimulus 
