170 AUSTRALIAN VEGETATION. 
until an increasing population and augmented conveniences for traffic 
could turn mineral wealth, however distantly located, advantageously 
to account. But how vastly might not any barren tracts of the 
interior be improved, and how many a lordly possession be founded 
by patient industry and intelligent judgment ! Storage of water, 
raising of woods, dissemination of perennial fodder-plants, will create 
alone marvellous changes ; and for these operations means are readily 
enough at command. Even the scattering of the grains of the common 
British Orache (Atriplex patulum),sm annual but autumnal plant, would, 
on the barest ground, realize fodder for sheep ; and the number of plants 
which for such purpose could be chosen are legion. The storage of 
rain-water might, in any rising valley, be so effected as to render it, 
simply by gravitation, available for irrigating purposes. 
As a curious fact, it may be instanced that in some of the waterless 
sandy regions of South Africa the copious naturalization of melon- 
plants has afforded the means of establishing halting-places in a desert 
country. On the sandy shores of the Great Bight, and also anywhere 
in the dry interior, such plants might be easily established. The 
avidity with which the natives at Escape Cliffs preserved the melon- 
seeds, after they once had recognised the value of their new treasure, 
holds out the prospect of the gradual diffusion of such vegetable 
boons over much unsettled country. 
No part of Australia has the marked peculiarities of its vegetation 
so strongly expressed, and no part of this great country produces so 
rich an assemblage of species within a limited area, as the remotest 
south-western portion of the continent. Indeed, the southern extre- 
mity of Africa is the only part of the globe in which an equally varied 
display of vegetable forms is found within equally narrow precincts, 
and endowed also with an equal richness of endemic genera. It is be- 
yond the scope of this brief treatise to enter fully into a detailed 
exposition of the constituents of the south-western flora. It may 
mainly suffice to notice such of the vegetable products as are drawn 
already into industrial use, or are likely to be of avail for the purpose. 
Foremost in this respect stands perhaps the Mahogany Eucalypt (Euca- 
lyptus marginata). The timber of this tree exhibits the wonderful 
quality of being absolutely impervious to the inroads of the limnoria, 
the teredo, and chelura, those minute marine creatures so destructive 
to wharves, jetties, and any work of naval architecture exposed to the 
