cxvi FLORA OF TASMANIA. [Progress of Australian 
In the autumn of the same year he visited Illawarra for the third time, and still later in the year he 
explored the Brisbane River with Lieutenant Oxley. 
In 1825 another expedition to the north-west was undertaken by Cunningham. Crossing the 
Nepean he proceeded to the southern feeders of the Hunter, and thence to the Pandora's Pass, 
descended to the Liverpool Plains, and ascended the Camden Valley to lat. 30° 47' S., long. 150° E. 
The three last months of the same year were spent in examining Wellington Valley, and the six 
following at Cox's River and the Illawarra district. 
In 1826, Cunningham visited New Zealand. Returning in January, 1827, he undertook the 
command of another most arduous expedition, in which he skirted the Liverpool Plains, crossed the 
Peel and Dumaresq Rivers, and discovered Darling Downs, in lat. 28° S., Cumming's Downs, and 
Peel's Plains, and after making various detours, returned to the Hunter's River, and thence by a 
new route to Paramatta and Sydney. 
In 1827 an % d 1828, Cunningham was collecting at Bathurst and Illawarra. In June 1828, he 
again visited Moreton Bay * with Mr. Fraser the colonial botanist, made an expedition to Mount 
Lindsay, to the Limestone station in Bremer River, discovered another pass across the mountains, 
proceeded north-west to Hay's Peak and Lister's Peak, and returned to Brisbane and Sydney. 
In 1829, Cunningham again explored the Blue Mountains, and in May of the same year took a 
third voyage to Moreton Bay, visited the head-waters of the Bremer and Campbell's Range, Norfolk 
Island, and Phillip Island, and returned to Sydney. In December he visited Illawarra and Broken 
Bay. 
In January, 1831, Cunningham crossed the Blue Mountains to Cox's River, and in February he 
sailed for England, where he took up his residence at Kew. In 1832, owing to the death of Charles 
Fraser, the situation of Colonial Botanist in New South Wales fell vacant ; it was offered to 
Cunningham, but he declined in favour of his brother Richard, who reached Sydney in 1833, and was 
murdered in Mitchell's journey in 1835. The appointment was thereafter again offered to Allan 
Cunningham, and being accepted, he sailed for Port Jackson in L836. The duties expected from the 
Colonial Botanist were however, at that time, neither scientific nor such as any one having the good 
of the colony at heart could conscientiously perform, and Cunningham soon resigned the appointment. 
In 1838, Cunningham again visited New Zealand, and returned in the same year to Sydney. 
His labours were now rapidly drawing to a close ; his originally robust and long severely tried con- 
stitution having been gradually undermined during twenty-two years' incessant travelling, was now 
found to have been so irremediably shattered in New Zealand, that he was in 1839 reluctantly com- 
pelled to decline accompanying Captain Wickham in his survey of the north-west coast; soon after 
which he died, in the Botanic Garden, Sydney, in June 1839, at the early age of forty-eight. 
I have dwelt at length upon Allan Cunningham's botanical travels, because they are by far the 
most continuous and extensive that have ever been performed in Australia, or perhaps in any other 
country. His vast collections were, for the most part, transmitted to Kew, whence they were trans- 
ferred to the British Museum. A very complete set was however given to Sir W. Hooker, and his 
own private herbarium was left to his early and attached friend R. Heward, Esq., F.L.S., from whose 
memoir most of the ahove information is abridged. 
Cunningham's most important published works consist of an Appendix to < King's Voyage,' and 
the c Prodromus Flora Novfe-Zelandife,' published in the ' Companion to the Botanical Magazine ' 
and the < Annals of Natural History.' He also wrote ' A Specimen of the Indigenous Botany of the 
* I find in Sturt's Australia (vol. i. p. 154) that an account of this journey was published in Sydney. 
