100 THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
grounds are well within our reach. In our early days, 
as well as conchologists, we had a number of botanists, 
though their number was scarcely as great as it now is. 
Botanical excursions were frequent, and to places that are 
now almost destroyed from a botanical point of view. 
I propose to shortly review the advantages Sydney 
possesses as a centre for Nature Study. Of all the capi- 
tal cities of Australia, it is by far the most favourably 
situated. Built on the shores of a magnificent inlet, close 
to the Pacific Ocean, the marine zoologist is able to study 
the marine fauna and flora from the mud fiat to the 
deep ocean. The County of Cumberland may well be con- 
sidered our sphere of operations, for almost all parts of 
it are accessible to us in a day’s outing. It is almost-an 
island, excepting at its southern boundary, being bounded 
by water. Beginning from the coast near Bulli, we have 
a line to the Cataract River, thence along that river to the 
Nepean, which the boundary follows to the sea north of 
Sydney, at Broken Bay. Almost the whole of this large 
area consists of the extensive Hawkesbury sandstone, 
carrying a somewhat uniform fauna and flora. The area, 
however, is broken up with a number of constant streams 
and invaded by several deep indentations, which cause 
considerable local variations. Again, in places we find 
the overlaying Wianamatta shale, which influences the 
flora more than the fauna. Within easy reach of Sydney 
we have the lower formations of the Narrabeen shales at 
Narrabeen, and the upper coal measures in the Northern 
Illawarra district, which allow the last southern rem- 
nants of the northern shrubs to find means for their ex- 
istence. These scrub areas, though small compared with 
those further north, with their palms and vines, give a 
different look to the vegetation, and influence the fauna 
and flora to a very great extent. Again, though further 
distant from Sydney, and beyond the boundaries of the 
County of Cumberland, the highlands of the Blue Moun- 
tains are available to us for study, and we have had seve- 
ral whole and half-day excursions to them, and been able 
to study a fauna and flora more akin to that of Victoria 
and Tasmania. 
Though the advance of settlement has driven away 
most of the larger peculiar animals from the neighbour- 
hood of Sydney, in the earlier days they existed here: 
the first emu was shot near Sydney, and also some of 
