It seemed to me they died as soon as their roots reached the salt 
subsoil after passing through the surface-soil, out of which the salts 
had in a great measure been washed by rain. In other places I 
have seen orchards successfully planted, but always on the banks of 
rivers where the country had been liable to flood for ages, and where 
rge gum-trees grew, as they do along the banks of Tivers, but 
New South Wales. The whole of the interior of the Colony may 
be described as a single plain, sloping away imperceptibly to the 
west from the spurs of the great dividing range 
* This range is on an average less than 3,000 feet high, though 
many of the peaks rise considerably above that altitude. _NoO- 
where does it reach the line of perpetual snow d the rivers 
which flow away to the west, to feed the Darling River, are only 
maintained by the annual rainfall which, along the mit of the 
range, 1s about 30 inches, becoming less graduall we go we 
5 . 
above Bourke. (Russell, Rain and River Obs., 1883.) That this 
plain is of aqueous origin, I think, will scarcely be denied by any- 
one who carefully considers the numberless facts which support 
such a conclusion. 
I know that it has been maintained by Mr. Tenison-W oods 
that the interior of New South Wales is wholly a formation of 
wind-blown sand, but I trust that gentleman will yet see reasons 
for changing his opinion. 
been covered, within comparatively recent geological time, by @ 
Sea, partly or perhaps wholly landlocked. 
- Apart from the scientific interest centred in this question of the 
‘geological formation of the Darling country, it has a very direct 
bearing on the probability of obtaining, by boring or sinking, an 
