1837.] Account of the New Colony of Western Australia, 307 



sandstone, which hardens on exposure to the air, and answers well for 

 building purposes ; in some situations shells and the roots of trees are 

 found imbedded in it ; I have not observed the trunks of trees in it us 

 mentioned by the French navigators. The Darling range of moun- 

 tains, which rise about two thousand feet above the level of the sea, 

 and are capped with fine evergreen mahogany, are chiefly granite, with 

 some quartz. The cleaning of the ground and the tillage are not 

 very laborious, but, from the high price of labour, an expensive work ; 

 oxen which cost from forty to fifty pounds per pair, and horses from 

 fifty to one hundred and fifty each, are used in the ploughs ; and farm- 

 ing is carried on in the English style, as far as practicable : the crops are 

 sowed in May, June, July, and August, and sometimes so late as Sep- 

 tember, and reaped in December, January and February; the early 

 crops succeed the best. 



Along the banks of the rivers may be seen fields of wheat, bar- 

 ley, oats, peas, potatoes, turnips, pumpkins, Indian wheat, &c. inter- 

 mixed with fine pasture land. The sandy soil is covered with coarse 

 herbage, on which cattle thrive remarkably well ; on the good soil, 

 about sixteen kinds of grasses are met with, amongst which the kan- 

 garoo grass is conspicuous. The gardens furnish most kind of edible 

 vegetables in great abundance; some of which may be obtained at all 

 seasons. Amongst these are cabbages, endive, beet, parsley, cresses, 



being confined to the warmer latitudes. Dr. Paris has given an account of a modern 

 formation of sandstone on the northern coast of Cornwall, where a large surface is so cover- 

 ed with a calcarious sand that it becomes agglutinated into stone, which he considers as 

 analogous to the rocks of Guadalope, and of which the specimens I have seen resemble 

 those presented by Beaufort to the Geological Society from the shore at Rhodes. Dr. Paris 

 ascribes the concretion not to the agency of the sea, nor to an excess of carbonic acid, but 

 to the solution of carbonate of lime itself in water, and subsequent percolation through 

 calcarious sand, the great hardness of the stone arising from the very sparing solubility of 

 this carbonate, and consequently very gradual formation of the deposit. Dr. McCulloch 

 describes calcarious concretions, found in banks of sand in Perthshire, which present a 

 great variety of stalactitic forms, generally more or less complicated, and often exceed- 

 ingly intricate and strange, and which appear to be analogous to those of King George's 

 Sound and Severns Island, and he mentions as not unfrequently occurring in sand in dif- 

 ferent parts of England (the sand above the fossill bones of Norfolk is given as an ex- 

 ample) long cylinders or tubes composed of sand agglutinated by carbonate of lime, or 

 calcarious stalactite entangling sand, which, like the concretions of Madeira and those 

 taken for corals at Bald Head, have been ranked improperly with organic remains. See 

 King's Australia, appendix p. 595.— Swan river (Riviere des cygnes) upon this part of the 

 coast, latitude 31—25 to 32, was examined by the French expedition. The rock in its 

 neighbourhood consisted altogether of sandy and calcarious incrustations in horizontal 

 feeds, enclosing it is stated, shells and the roots and even trunks of trees.— Peron. vol. 1, 

 jp. 179— Freycinet, p. 5—170. 



