KUNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BD. 52. N:o |7. 15 
Rainy weather, however, means fine weather in the whole of torrid Australia. 
The outburst of the rainy season signifies in Kimberley the same thing as the return 
of the sun and the spring in our part of the world. Life is rejuvenated and nature 
develops its slumbering forces as through a charm. Here there is no transitional 
period; everything happens so suddenly that a few days suffice to waken those lively 
exhibitions of the generative instincet in the animal that, especially in this barren 
nature, give the abrupt change the character of a metamorphosis. 
But it would be wrong to give the impression that those conditions are 
characteristic of the summer as a whole. It is only, as indeed is indicated above, 
a short time in which those first signs of a new season make themselves so per- 
ceptibly felt. The oppressing heat of the summer, now more unpleasant in conse- 
quence of the humidity of the air, was soon accompanied by an absolute calm during 
the day and for the rest by weather scarcely to be distinguished from that im- 
mediately preceding the rains. Sometimes and very irregularly there came thunder- 
storms with heavy-rain, but as to the organic life, they did not change in any re- 
markable degree the character of the savanna-wood. Above all it was the bird-world 
that was the breath of the summer. The lower animal world was no more able than 
was the lack of colour of the flowering trees and the poor herbal Flora to relieve 
the oppressing sameness, lying like a nightmare over the country all the year round. 
Sunday Island (Plate 4, fig. 2, plate 5, fig. 5, 6) 
situated outside King's Sound is one of the biggest, or perhaps the biggest, island, 
in Buccaneer archipelago and about 8 Eng. miles in length. It is inhabited by 
natives who here live their undisturbed life under the protection of the protector of 
the government, the missionary S. HADLEY. 
The island is composed of red tertiary sandstone and is very rocky and high. 
One walks over naked rocks, covered with bush-vegetation and in the dells with rather 
rank FEucalyptus-trees, forming small forest-groves. Spinifex-grass is also seen. In 
the deepest depressions near the sea, particularly if there are fresh-water springs or 
fresh running water, the vegetation may become more luxuriant. Here small palm- 
groves (Pandanus) grow too and large bushy brushwood and man-high grass and 
brakes. 
The distribution of the forms of vegetation in the dells out towards the sea 
was usually as follows: 
1) Far up, more or less tall gum-wood and Spinifex (higher up sometimes along 
the whole valley soft but thin grass-vegetation on sandy ground). 
2) Palm-grove of Pandanus. 
3) High-growing, thick, bushy brushwood of Eucalyptus and of brake-vegetation. 
4) Mangrove-wood (the ebbzone). 
This vegetation was in places richer than I saw it anywhere on the continent, 
except possibly in Dampier land. 
