10 
upon its trunk ! In its fall it had ovei turned another 168 feet 
high, which had brought up with its roots a ball of earth 20 feet 
across.” There are other remarkable features, which, as they ap- 
pertain to districts frequently alluded to in the course of the work, 
it becomes necessary to notice, namely the immense deltas formed 
by the descent of the waters of the interior, such as the valley of the 
Murray near its embouchure into the sea, spoken of as the great 
Murray scrub of South Australia ; this enormous flat of nearly one 
hundred miles in length by more than twenty in breadth is clothed 
with a vegetation peculiarly its own, the prevailing trees which form 
a belt down the centre consisting of dwarf Eucalypti , while the mar- 
gins are fringed with shrub-like trees of various kinds. Nor must 
the immense belts of Eanksiee, which grow on the sand-hills border- 
ing the sea-coast and in some parts of the interior, or the districts 
clothed with grass-trees ( Xanthorrhoce ), be passed over unnoticed ; 
in the intertropical regions of Australia, of which at present so 
little is known, we find, besides the Eucalypti , Earth sice and other 
trees of the southern coast, dense forests of canes, mangroves, 
&c. Each of these districts has a zoology peculiarly its own : 
for instance, the Eanksiee are everywhere tenanted by the true Me- 
liphagous birds ; the Eucalypti by the Trichoglossi and Ptiloti ; the 
towering fig-trees by the Regent and Satin birds ; the palms by the 
Carpophagce or fruit-eating Pigeons, and the grassy plains by the 
ground Pigeons and grass Parrakeets. The circumstance of the boles 
of the trees being destitute of a thick corrugated rind or bark will 
doubtless account for the total absence of any member of the genus 
Picus or Woodpeckers, a group of birds found in all parts of the 
world with the exception of Australia and Polynesia. 
Such then is a transient view of a few of the great physical fea- 
tures of Australia to which I have thought it requisite to allude in 
the Introduction of the present work, and I cannot conclude this 
portion of the subject without mentioning the very remarkable 
manner in which many of the Australian birds represent other 
nearly allied species belonging to the Old World, as if some particular 
law existed in reference to the subject, the species so represented 
being evidently destined to fulfil the same offices in either hemi- 
sphere. As instances in point, I may mention among the Falconidce 
the F. hypoleucus and F. melanogenys , which represent the F. Is - 
landicus and F. Peregrinus ; our Merlin and Kestril are equally well 
represented by the Falco frontatus and Timiunculus Cenchroides of 
Australia ; the Osprey of Europe also is represented by the P . leuco- 
cephala ; among the wading birds, the Curlew and the Whimbrel of 
Europe are beautifully represented by the Numenius Australis and 
N. uropygialis , and the bar-tailed and black-tailed Godwits by the 
Lmiosa uropygialis and L. Melanurdides. Roth Europe and Au- 
stralia have each one Stilted Plover, one Dottrell ( Eudromias ), and 
one Avocet. Among the water birds the Cormorants and Grebes 
of Europe are similarly represented by the Plialacrocorax Carhoides , 
&c., and Podiceps Australis , P. Nestor and P. gularis\ and other in- 
