CXV1 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 Eiver 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 and 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 1836. The duties expected from the 

 Colonial Botanist were however, at that time, neither scientific nor such as any o. e 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, iu 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 above information is abridged. 



Cunningham's most important published works consist of an Appendix to ' King's Voyage,' and 

 the ' Prodromus Florae Novse-Zelandiae,' 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. 



