erald green
water-sedge. A shallow lake, dotted with wild ducks; here and there a
group of wild swan, black with red bills, floating calmly on its bosom.
A long stretch of grass as smooth as a bowling-green. A sudden rocky
rise, clothed with native cypress (Exocarpus--Oh my botanical
readers!), honeysuckle (Banksia), she-oak (Casuarina), and here and
there a stunted gum. Cape Chatham began to show grander and nearer,
topping all; and soon they saw the broad belt of brown sandy heath that
lay along the shore.

"Here," said the Doctor, riding up, "we leave the last limit of the
lava streams from Mirngish and the Organ-hill. Now, immediately you
shall see how we pass from the richly-grassed volcanic plains, into the
barren sandstone heaths; from a productive pasture land into a useless
flower-garden. Nature here is economical, as she always is: she makes
her choicest ornamental efforts on spots otherwise useless. You will
see a greater variety of vegetation on one acre of your sandy heath
than on two square miles of the thickly-grassed country we have been
passing over."

It was as he said. They came soon on to the heath; a dark dreary
expanse, dull to look upon after so long a journey upon the bright
green grass. It stretched away right and left interminably, only broken
here and there with islands of dull-coloured trees; as melancholy a
piece of country as one could conceive: yet far more thickly peopled
with animal as well as vegetable life, than the rich pastoral downs
further inland. Now they began to see the little red brush kangaroo,
and the grey forester, skipping away in all directions; and had it been
summer they would have been startled more than once by the brown snake,
and the copper snake, deadliest of their tribe. The painted quail, and
the brush quail (the largest of Australian game birds I believe),
whirred away from beneath their horses' feet; and the ground parrot,
green with mottlings of gold and black, rose like a partridge from the
heather, and flew low. Here, too, the Doctor flushed a "White's
thrush," close to an outlying belt of forest, and got into a great
state of excitement about it. "The only known bird," he said, "which is
found in Europe, America, and Australia alike." Then he pointed out the
emu wren, a little tiny brown fellow, with long hairy tail-feathers,
flitting from bush to bush; and then, leaving ornithology, called their
attention to the wonderful variety of low vegetation that th