nOKN EXPEDITION — NARRATIVE. 99 



pl.uits wliirli ill tliis centra,! district have a very limited di.strilnitioii. Amongst 

 tlicse Swaiiisoi/ia civicscrjis \va,.s mily found in two small colonies nearly sixty miles 

 apait, and Gflodcnia Ilfliniaiia in the same way was only met with in two spots a 

 hundred nnles apart. Of course these and other such plants may occur elsewhere, 

 hut as a constant watch was kept every day over the large area of country 

 traversed it is quite safe to adopt Professor Tate's opinion that they ai-e extremely 

 sporadic in occurrence. Just like certain of the animals such as the earthwoi'in 

 and various species of snails those which still persist may be regarded as relics of 

 a former more widely-spr'cad flora which ha\e, under the gradually increasing 

 desiccation of the country, been alile to pei-sist in favourable spots. After photo- 

 graphing the grass trees, a group of which with Pine Point in the background is 

 repi'esented in the illustration (Plate 4), we rode on over undulating country with 

 a broad belt of scrub rather licher than any we had hitherto seen as it contained 

 plenty of Prostanthera, various species of Ereniophila in llower and Currajong 

 trees. The Malice Gum was thickly covered with a bright I'ed flowering mistletoe. 

 To the north-east we could see the Gosse P^ange, an isolated mass about two miles 

 in length and the same in breadth. The country all round this was thick with 

 Porcupine grass amongst which were tine specimens of Acacia dictyoplilcba with 

 large yellow balls of tlower, anil the ground was cut througii by deep, narrow 

 watercourses down which in rainy .seasons the water pours from the hillside, only 

 to become rapidly lost. 



Turning round the western end of Gosse Range we struck Rudall Creek, 

 which runs east from here to join the main Finke. Our camp at night had l)een 

 a dry one, so that we were glad to find a small water-hole. Tt lay in the creek 

 bed at the base of a rock ; probably beneath the sand a bar of rock runs across 

 and so causes the water to come to the surface. While we rested a flock of rock 

 pigeons i^Lophophaps leuco^aslcr) came down to the water-hole. The.se are amongst 

 the most distinctive birds of the district ; in colour they rcsemlile, gcneivilly 

 speaking, the yellow-brown sand or rock on which they remain quiet until you are 

 clo.se to them when they rise with a whirr and then, once on the wing, glide away 

 quietly. They have a curious habit of making a kind of run ilown to a water-hole. 

 In this spot, for example, the pool was hemmed in on one side by a rock about 

 fifteen feet high, while on the other side was a level sandy baidc. The birds 

 congregated at the top of the rock and then one after the other ran down a beaten 

 track to tlie water and up again. 



From Pudall Creek we travelled north towards what looked like a series of 

 rounded, smooth, grass covered hills nuich like the l)owns of the south of England. 



