6 AUSTRALIAN GRASSES AND PASTURE PLANTS 



an important article of food. He, inter alia, writes : ' ' The 

 grass had been pulled up to a very great extent and piled 

 in hay-ricks, so that the aspect of the desert was softened 

 into the agreeable semblance of a hay field. The grass was 

 beautifully green beneath the heaps and full of seeds, and 

 our cattle were very fond of this hay. ' ' Since the introduc- 

 tion of sheep farming hi Australia, a little more than a century 

 ago, the pastoral industry has gradually increased in import- 

 ance, and is now estimated to be worth about 250,000,000 

 sterling, and yearly increasing in value, being the most im- 

 portant in Australia, and the one from which the population 

 derives its greatest wealth. It is, therefore, a matter of 

 national importance that more attention should be devoted 

 to the valuable indigenous grasses and other pasture herbage, 

 and that its great economic value should be more generally 

 known to stockowners. For without that rich and varied 

 vegetation, which is the most valuable asset in Australia, it 

 would be practically impossible to feed the millions of sheep, 

 cattle and horses now pastured on this continent. As far 

 as is at present known there are three hundred and seventy 

 species and many varieties of grass indigenous to Australia, 

 and they are fairly well distributed over the continent, quite 

 a number occurring on the so-called desert tracts of Central 

 Australia. Some of these attain a height of from eight to 

 ten feet or more, but by far the greater number grow, under 

 normal conditions, from one foot to four feet high. All 

 these grasses, of course, are not valuable feed for stock, and 

 although the inferior ones have their uses in the economy 

 of Nature, further reference to them is not necessary in this 

 book. 



Having travelled more than fifty thousand miles in 

 Australia during the last forty years, and having critically 

 examined much of the indigenous vegetation in all the States 

 of the Commonwealth and in other countries, and having 



