Notes on South Australian Plants. 185 



country stretches perhaps as far N. W. as N. E. from 

 Lake Torrens, and that the drainage of this tract, at least in 

 wet seasons, is finding its way into the great depression north 

 of Spencer's Gulf; and, finally, that in all likelihood a path of 

 communication will be opened from thence, in a N. W. 

 direction, through a country traversed by watercourses similar 

 to Cooper's Creek. 



If these suppositions, which suggests themselves from the 

 inspection of the plants before us, should be borne out, then 

 also the surmise of the Surveyor-General of this colony 

 may be realised; namely, that the creeks or channels of 

 drainage from N. W., noticed by Mr. Stuart in the remotest 

 parts of the interior explored by him, are perhaps to be re- 

 garded as the continuation of Start's Creek, left by us in 

 Gregory's expedition towards Central Australia, and which 

 disappeared in a saline desert at the point where we left it 

 in 1856. 



Should the identity of these systems of water be hereafter 

 demonstrated, then an overland-route will be open for our 

 South Australian neighbours to the fertile portions of Arn- 

 heim's Land, and to the harbors of the N. W. coast of 

 the continent. This hypothesis is certainly favored by the 

 established fact, that the lower part of Sturfs Creek is found 

 sufficiently elevated to admit of a very faint, and therefore 

 easily interrupted, yet in great floods continuous, drainage 

 from S turfs Creek to the N. W. parts of South Australia. 



Returning to the immediate subject of this paper, we ob- 

 serve in the collection neither plants peculiar to the dense 

 brigalow scrubs of Eastern Australia, nor hardly any species 

 approaching to the harsh, often thorny and impenetrable 

 scrub-vegetation of Southern and Western Australia, a fact 

 which augurs well for a traversable country towards Central 

 Australia. 



The united botanical collections which we owe now to the 

 zeal of Messrs. Gregory, Babbage, and Stuart, have brought 

 into our possession some material for judging on the numeri- 

 cal relations of the order of plants in the sub-tropical region 

 of the Australian interior. According to the data before us, 

 Compositse and Leguminosse prevail over all other families of 

 plants, and probably the former again over the latter. Next to 

 them Salsolacese, Grasses (many of nutritious kinds), Malva- 

 ceae and Myoporinse appear most numerous. That Myrta- 

 cese should be scantily represented seems so much more 

 singular, as they are constituting, not only in most other 



