144 E. C. ANDREWS. 



The model under consideration is an attempt to repre- 

 sent the main relations existing between the plateau and 

 the adjacent Coastal Area on the one hand, and betweeu 

 the plateau and the adjacent Inland Plains on the other. 

 The usefulness of the model is limited, because of the 

 necessary distortion of the Vertical Scale as compared 

 with the Horizontal Scale, the Vertical element being ten 

 times that of the Horizontal. By this method, all topo- 

 graphic details have had to be neglected, only the main 

 valleys and hills being capable of representation. 



The great area of unreduced plateau and the wild nature 

 of the topographic forms linking it to the Coast and the 

 Inland Plains are well shown. The explanation of the 

 isolation of New England from the coast as regards com- 

 munication, and of the apparently capricious detours of the 

 Great Northern Railway, as shown on an ordinary map, is 

 also afforded by a glance at the figure. The impossibility 

 of the closer settlement of the areas bounding the plateau 

 along its eastern margin is also obvious. Closer settlement 

 has been proposed for these mountain fastnesses, but it is 

 doubtful if this will ever be brought about. At most it 

 will support only a scattered population ; as similar regions 

 in Europe and America — areas of dense population — are 

 almost uninhabited save by pastoralists, miners and timber 

 getters. This does not apply, of course, to the magnificent 

 lands of the Tweed and the Richmond, or to the "bottoms" 

 of the Clarence, Macleay and Manning Rivers. The Inland 

 Slopes of Eastern Australia, however, of which a detail is 

 supplied in the model, form one of the most magnificent 

 expanses of agricultural land in the world. They are due 

 to the denudation of the plateau basalts and Palaeozoic rocks 

 — and to the redistribution of the products of such denuda- 

 tion to the west of New England — by the great inland 

 rivers of the continent. The model illustrates this moun- 



