CAUSE OF THIS.

But there is another circumstance that appears to have escaped
Mr. Dawson's observation; which is the actual property of the trees
themselves, as to the quantity of vegetable matter they produce in decay.
Being a military man, I cannot be supposed to have devoted much of my time
to agricultural pursuits; but it has been obvious to me, as it must have
been to many others, that in New South Wales, the fall of leaves and the
decay of timber, so far from adding to the richness of its soil, actually
destroy minor vegetation. This fact was brought more home to me in
consequence of its having been my lot to spend some months upon Norfolk
Island, a distant penal settlement attached to the Government of Sydney.
There the abundance of vegetable decay was as remarkable as the want of it
on the Australian Continent. I have frequently sunk up to my knees in a
bed of leaves when walking through its woods; and, often when I placed my
foot on what appeared externally to be the solid trunk of a tree, I have
found it yield to the pressure, in consequence of its decomposition into
absolute rottenness. But such is not the case in New South Wales. There,
no such accumulations of vegetable matter are to be met with; but where
the loftiest tree of the forest falls to the ground, its figure and length
are marked out by the total want of vegetation within a certain distance
of it, and a small elevation of earth, resembling more the refuse or
scoria of burnt bricks than any thing else, is all that ultimately remains
of the immense body which time or accident had prostrated. Thus it would
appear, that it is not less to the character of its woods than to the
ravages of fire that New South Wales owes its general sterility.

CONNECTION BETWEEN THE GEOLOGY AND VEGETATION.

Whilst prosecuting my researches in the interior of the colony, I could
not but be struck with the apparent connection between its geology and
vegetation; so strong, indeed, was this connection, that I had little
difficulty, after a short experience, in judging of the rock that formed
the basis of the country over which I was travelling, from the kind of
tree or herbage that flourished in the soil above it. The eucalyptus
pulv., a species of eucalyptus having a glaucus-coloured leaf, of
dwarfish habits and growing mostly in scrub, betrayed the sandstone
formation, wherever it existed, This was the case in many parts of the
County of Cumberland, in some parts of