firming their conclusions from scientific knowledge. The flats 

 resemble the prolific valleys of the Nile ; they are the product of 

 floods that washed from the interior earthy deposits, which, settling 

 layer upon layer in the course of ages, made fat seed-beds that 

 in their transition from their original place had become sweetened 

 by exposure to air and water. In those deposits there was the humus 

 of decaying vegetation, swept from the surface of the tracts over 

 which the floods had raged, and the black loam, with which the flats 

 have alternately been built up. At a depth of 200 feet there have 

 been found boulders of considerable size, showing that, at one time, 

 the flats must have been the bed of a very rapid stream, as the 

 stones had been carried for miles from the ranges, while the pres- 

 ence of the alluvial, to a depth, in places, of 40 or 50 feet, mark the 

 places where, owing to depressions, the stream had coursed more 

 slowly, carrying and liberating as it flowed nothing but mud, which, 

 when dried, became the richest garden mould. It is on the " made" 

 land made in the manner that has been briefly sketched that the 

 cultivators of the Swan are able to achieve their greatest success. 

 As soon as you get beyond the somewhat narrow line of the alluvial, 

 there are the gravelly sides of the Darling ranges on the east, and 

 on the west, cold, sandy country, timbered with banksia, which is 

 of no agrarian account. About here the ranges carry the distinctive 

 sign of poor country in the growth of the kingya blackboys, which 

 may easily be identified by a stranger from their single stem, sur- 

 mounted with a bunch of heads, that are very similar in appearance 

 to a cluster of drumsticks. Where these are seen the place is one 

 that the intending selector should avoid. 



"The banks of the S\van," says Mr. Charles Harper, M. L. A. 

 (President of the Bureau of Agriculture), " are highly adapted to the 

 growth of wheat ; the river bottoms are remarkable for some of the 

 yields of corn that have been taken off them. I have been told that 

 400 bushels of wheat were obtained from ten acres, which have 

 been pointed out to me. Of course that land had been, to some 

 extent, manured. Wheat is seldom grown now on the Hats ; the 

 crops are nearly all cut for hay. The general yield is about a ton 

 and a halt' to the acre. The upland is not so rich. The Hats vary 

 from 20 yards to half-a-mile wide. I should say there are 2000 or 

 3000 acres of them in the Swan district proper, that is, close to 

 Guildford. All this land is in private hands. It is many years since 

 there were any CrOWQ areas here. The original grantees got the 

 land iii consideration of their colonisation efforts in Sir fames Stir- 

 ime, N'ot many of the grants belong to the families of the 

 original beneficiaries. At first, the Swan was almost exclusively a 

 farming district, as it was the nearest pi. ice to Perth where suitable 

 land could be got to provide flour for the people. There is still in 

 the neighbourhood an interesting relic ot that time. I mean 

 Cruise's mill, which was driven by the water-power of Ellen's 

 brook, a tributary of the Swan. When York was opened as a farm- 



