oy 
2a THE VICTORIAN NAYVULALIST. 
course he had not se.n this—is a Weatherboard or Govett’s Leap , alley 
in process of formation: the waves of the inland harbour are wearing 
vertical cliffs as at Cheltenham say, and the currents carry out 
débris through the narrow heads. How far this is the view held by 
Sydney geologists I cannot say ; but the modern tendency is rather 
to call in the aid of subaerial denudation in the explanation of 
contour phenomena. Thus the Chalk and Limestone escarpments 
in England and France have long ceased to be considered as old 
lines of cliff. And the cirques of Norway and the Alps, great 
amphitheatrical valleys, apparently very similar to those of New 
South Wales, are respectively attributed by Amand Hellund and 
Prof. Bonney, to the action of glaciers and the action of multi- 
tudinous waterfalls. As traces of glacial action have been detected 
by Mr. Stirling in the Australian Alps, we may be on the look-out 
for evidences of more extensive erosion in the past. 
Darwin spent a short time at a station manned by some forty 
convicts, and comments on the awful convict atmosphere. He went 
for a day’s shooting, but had poor sport; no kangaroo, no wild-dog 
even, no emu; but the party secured a kangaroo rat by the aid of 
the dogs, ‘‘ an animal,” as he says, ‘‘as large as a rabbit, but with 
the figure of a kangaroo.” He did not see many birds, only “‘ some 
large flocks of white cockatoos feeding in a cornfield,” and a few 
most beautiful parrots, crows and maypies. In the evening he saw 
several Platypuses “along a chain of ponds, which in this dry 
country represented the course of a river.” 
On the ride to Bathurst, he experienced ‘“ the sirocco-like wind of 
Australia, which comes from the parched deserts of the interior.” 
This untoward experience may perhaps account for the caustic 
reflection which presently follows. ‘I was told at Sydney not to 
form too bad an opinion of Australia by judging of the country from 
the roadside, nor too good a one sa Bathurst; in this latter 
respect I did not feel myself in the least danger of being prejudiced.” 
Darwin’s views on the then state of society in New Sowa Wales, 
the condition of the convicts, and the attractions the country 
possessed for emigrants, are hardly matter for discussion here, 
though they are extremely interesting and fully as flatterimg as 
his observations on the country itself. 
On landing at Hobart, on 5th February, Darwin is as little 
pleased with the favourite summer resort of Australians of to-day as 
he is with the monotony of the Mainland. ‘Those who during the 
recent vacation, Premier or Primate or private individual, have 
found health and enjoyment amid the glorious scenery of the Lower 
Derwent, will be disappointed in the great Naturalist’s estimate of 
its beauties. He begins, ‘“‘Mount;Wellington is a mountain 3100 
feet high, but of little picturesque beauty.” I need hardly say that 
the mountain is nowadays readily accessible, and the climb an easy 
