KUNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND 52. N:o (7. 9 
The rest of the time on the Australian Continent, during which inter alia we 
undertook a trip up the mountains and to the rainy forests in the eastern part of 
Queensland, does not belong to the subject of this work. On the 18th of October, 
1911, we set out on our journey from Adelaide over the Indian Ocean, through the 
Red Sea and the Suez Canal, to Europe. 
The geographical conditions. 
A. The climate. The savanna-landseape. The rains and the animal-life. 
The tropic of capricorn is geographically reckoned as a boundary between the 
tropical and sub-tropical zone of the Southern hemisphere. In Australia the smaller 
Northern part accordingly belongs to the torrid zone. 'The subtropic lies to the 
south of it. 
Consequently southern Kimberley together with Dampier land and the islands 
off Kings Sounds, where my studies in the north-western part of the Australian 
continent were pursued, fall entirely within the limits of the tropical zone. Southern 
Kimberley, however, is in climate as well as in nature to be characterized as a tran- 
sition region between those two zones. 
The geographer indicates the country that lies nearest the desert as a specific 
district, which he names half-desert. 
Northern Kimberley (like Arnhem land) has plenty of rain during the summer 
through the tropical north-west monsoon. In the south part of Kimberley, on the 
other hand, we find the torrid climate of the half-desert, which here extends right 
to the sea. Only Dampier land, where the presence of wells affords better irrigation, 
forms an exception. 
As to the specific region that I here intend to describe, it is a part of the land 
nearest to Table Sound, which here partly has the character of stony desert. "The 
following description of the climate and nature of southern Kimberley concerns a 
region where the conditions are especially typical. In the following pages the 
somewhat more favoured conditions of Dampier land and Sunday Islands are to be 
spoken of. 
The boundary of temperature between the hot and the subtropic zone is at 
the isotherm of 20” C. This runs in the winter (July) over the northern part of 
Australia and to the wester it is somewhat deflected towards the south, and it lies 
here considerably below the 19th degree of latitude, which degree I very nearly 
reached during my journey inland. Though the natural conditions of this part of 
S. Kimberley must be said largely to correspond to those of the northern part of 
the subtropical zone, there is, as has been said above, no point of it lying beyond 
K. Sv. Vet. Akad. Handl. Band 52. N:o 17. 2 
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