J. W. BOULTBEE. CLXV. 
the Hucalyptus, worthless for the most part for industrial 
purposes, while upon the chocolate lands and sandhills the 
only useful timber, and even then confined to certain locali- 
ties, and sparsely scattered, is the native or colonial pine, 
and other timbers, the box, gidgea, mulga, and beefwood, 
stunted at the best, are useful for but little else than 
fencing purposes. The river flats and plains are generally 
free from scrubs, and after rains carry a fair growth of the 
tussocky varieties of indigenous grasses and salsolaceous 
shrubs, now fast disappearing. The sandhills grow grass 
and herbs, and at rare intervals stunted shrubs and bushes, 
many of them edible and fattening for stock. The whole 
of this division is, with the most insignificant exception, 
devoted to stock raising; but the intermittent and scanty 
nature of the rainfall, and the ever and often-recurring 
periods of drought, together with the other adverse con- 
ditions, render the pastoral industry a precarious and far 
from profitable one. 
Only one river worthy of the name—the Darling—a slow 
sluggish stream, with no great fall in its whole length, 
navigable in any ordinary season from its junction with 
the Murray to Walgett, a distance of 1,500 miles, intersects 
the country. During floods it spreads, and the volume of 
water flowing to the sea is very great, while during periods 
of drought the flow ceases, and in parts break into chains 
of waterholes. The other watercourses or tributaries, of 
this waterway, are also intermittent in their flow and not 
navigable, and for the most part consist of miles of dry 
sandy bottom, with here and there a waterhole of more or 
lesspermanency. The frontages of these rivers and water- 
courses have some value for the pastoral occupancy, and 
as they can be cheaply improved by the erection of dams, 
and as they afford an inexpensive though a precarious source 
of water supply—back from the frontage artificial supplies 
