An enumeration of all the fodder plants and herbage common to North Queensland would require a long catalogue, as variety is Nature's law in this case, and the western soil teems after the wet season with flowers, herbs, grasses, and fruits all more or less adapted for use as fodder. The prospect on the wide spreading plains after the early thunder showers in November and December is very refreshing to the eye that has been for months staring on the dry stalks of the Mitchell grass, or else on the brown bare earth. Trailing vines of the melon and cucumber family spread themselves in profusion, the fruit of which is eagerly sought after by stock. Convolvolus flowers and vines grow among the young green grasses, and many varieties of the compositæ show in bright yellow their gleaming flowers, mingled with hibiscus of every hue. The growth of plant life is marvellous after the fall of soft rain on the warm rich soil. Portulaca, known as pigweed, is among the first of the plants to spring up, and grows in great masses; the seeds form a principal article of food for the birds that frequent the plains, the young plants are also used by stock, and are not despised by man in an emergency. All life, vegetable and animal, revives suddenly after the surface of the earth has been saturated with the life-giving element; frogs and locusts sing their songs of joy day and night; flies increase beyond conception, and mosquitoes and sandflies torment to distraction both man and beast. On the plains, the first vegetation to spring up is the sensitive plant, spreading its delicate foliage over the surface, the leaves closing during the heat of the day, and opening in the evening. The small creeping plant said to be poisonous to stock (Euphorbia Drummondi), appears immediately after rain. The climbing vine (Capparis lucida), which bears a sub-acid fruit not unlike passion fruit, at this time of year gives out its white flowers and fruit at the same time. The scent of the innumerable flowers on the plains, the tender herbage, the young grasses sending their seed stalks several feet high, and all the soil covered densely with vegetation and herbage suitable for stock present a picture to the eye, so utterly opposed to that which prevailed but a few weeks before the advent of the rains, that the spectator can scarcely believe it to be the same country. The seeds of some plants will remain dormant for years, and then suddenly spring up in profusion; for instance, the plant commonly known as peabush, a leguminous annual (botanically Sesbania aegyptica), has only a periodical growth, and at such times, varying for many years, it covers the plains in such rank masses that the stockriders get quite bewildered when searching for stock through its scrublike density; for several years after this abundant growth, the plant will scarcely be noticeable; it is said that every three years is a peabush year, but the writer cannot support the