hat rushes up them, and extinguishes
every torch.

The open and grassy forests of Argyle are terminated by another of those
abrupt sand-stone passes I have just described, and the traveller again
falls considerably from his former level, previously to his entering on
Yass Plains, to which this pass is the only inlet.

From Yass Plains the view to the S. and S.W. is over a lofty and broken
country: mountains with rounded summits, others with towering peaks, and
others again of lengthened form but sharp spine, characterise the various
rocks of which they are composed. The ranges decline rapidly from east to
west, and while on the one hand the country has all the appearance of
increasing height, on the other it sinks to a dead level; nor on the
distant horizon to the N. W. is there a hill or an inequality to be seen.

From Yass Plains to the very commencement of the level interior, every
range I crossed presented a new rock-formation; serpentine quartz in
huge white masses, granite, chlorite, micaceous schist, sandstone,
chalcedony, quartz, and red jasper, and conglomerate rocks.

It was however, out of my power, in so hurried a journey as that which I
performed down the banks of the Morumbidgee River, to examine with the
accuracy I could have wished, either the immediate connection between
these rocks or their gradual change from the one to the other. I was
content to ascertain their actual succession, and to note the general
outlines of the ranges; but the defect of vision under which I labour,
prevents me from laying them before the public.

CHARACTER OF THE SOIL CONNECTED WITH GEOLOGICAL FORMATION.

From what has been advanced, however, it will appear that the physical
structure of the southern parts of the colony is as varied, as that of the
western interior is monotonous, and we may now pursue our original
observations on the soil of the colony with greater confidence.

In endeavouring to account for the poverty of the soil in New South Wales,
and in attributing it in a great degree to the causes already mentioned,
it appears necessary to estimate more specifically the influence which the
geological formation of a country exercises on its soil, and how much the
quality of the latter partakes of the character of the rock on which it
reposes. And although I find it extremely difficult to explain myself as
I should wish to do, in the critical discussion on which I have thus
entered, yet as it is material to the el