Excursion to Botany Bay. 3383 



Excursion to Botany Bay, New South Wales. 

 By John MacGillivray, Esq. 



With the name of Botany Bay most people in England still asso- 

 ciate the ideas of felony and transportation, unaware that it has never 

 been directly associated, to any considerable extent, with the annals 

 of crime. My object, however, is not to enter upon such a subject ; 

 but merely to narrate an excursion made to the place, in quest of ob- 

 jects of Natural History. 



Leaving Sydney one fine morning in December — the height of the 

 Australian summer — a walk of five miles brought me to the waters of 

 the bay, upon its nothern shore, where, by the way, the shade of Sir 

 Joseph Banks would be surprized to find his name blazoned forth in 

 large letters upon the sign- board of an hotel, well known to the good 

 folks of Sydney. The intervening country is a tract of low sandy 

 ground, covered with bushes, with numerous swamps and lagoons of 

 fresh water towards the east, where the rising ground suddenly ends 

 in a line of bold sandstone cliffs, the base of which is chafed by the 

 waves of the Pacific. Over this district the variety of flowering shrubs 

 and other plants, although considerable, is yet not sufficiently striking 

 to remind one that to this the place is indebted for the name bestowed 

 upon it by its discoverers. Perhaps the most remarkable of these is 

 the curious Xanthorrhaea hastilis, or grass-tree, with tall spear-like 

 flower-stalks, eight feet high, springing from the centre of a great tuft 

 of grass-like leaves arching over a bare supporting trunk. But the 

 finest show is made by the white and pink heath-like kinds of Epa- 

 cris, and the purple-blossomed Boroniae — both among the well-known 

 attractions of the English greenhouses. Yet botanizing here is not 

 altogether unattended with danger, for snakes are still abundant in 

 the swamps, although within a few miles only of a city containing 

 50,000 inhabitants. Once I nearly trod upon a carpet-snake {Morelia 

 variegata), fortunately a harmless kind ; and soon afterwards killed 

 another, the "black snake" of the colonists {Acanthophis Tortor), the 

 bite of which is reputed to be highly poisonous. 



Scarcely any of this tract of land is fit for cultivation. It extends 

 from Port Jackson to Botany Bay in one direction, and, in the other, 

 stretches westward from the coast, intersected by more or less conti- 

 nuous sand hills, the boundaries of numerous swamps. These marshes 

 harbour very few birds. Occasionally one starts a snipe (Scolopax 

 Hardwickii), or the beautiful swamp parrakeet [Pezoporus formosus), 



