This completes the series of expeditions undertaken for the relief of Burke and Wills. The eastern half of Australia was now nearly all known--from south to north, and from north to south, it had been crossed and re-crossed, and future enterprise was soon to expend itself upon the western half. So far the results arrived at had been most satisfactory. Not much over forty years after Oxley's gloomy prediction of the future of the interior, country had been found surpassing in richness any that was then known. The pathways for the pioneers had been marked out, and a few more years was to see the whole of the continent up to the western boundary of Queensland the busy scene of pastoral industry. Most noticeable in the history we have just recounted is the persistent manner in which each succeeding explorer found in all new discoveries the fulfillment of some pet theory. To the men brought up in the old school of belief in the central desert, every fresh advance into the interior was only pushing the desert back a step; it was there still, and, according to some, it is there now. Others who believed in the great river theory, imagined its source in the fresh discovery of every inland river; and those who pinned their faith on a central range, accepted the low broken ridges of the M'Donnel Ranges as the leading spurs. But the discoveries of the luxuriant new herbage and edible shrubs of the interior were the greatest stumbling block to all. That the much-despised SALSOLEA and other shrubs should be coveted and sought after; that the bugbear of Oxley, the ACACIA PENDULA, should now be held to indicate good country was inconceivable; and when, above everything, the most fondly cherished of all delusions, that in the torrid north the sheep's wool would turn to hair, had to be given up, it was quite evident that a new order of belief would soon be entertained. Writers, however, were still found to argue that things must be after the old opinion. When M'Kinlay took his little flock of sheep across Australia and found them grow so fat that, when at the Gulf, he had to select the leanest one to kill from choice, they cried out triumphantly, "Ah, but the flesh was tasteless!" When he assured them that he had never enjoyed better mutton, they said that it was hunger made him think so. Still the distinctive value of the country was not under stood. Landsborough, who ought certainly to have known better, speaks highly of the Gulf plains as a suitable sheep run; but he was not alone in this belief. The valley of the Burdekin, and many of its tributaries were stocked with sheep by men of acknowledged experience. In a few years the error was found out, and sheep pastures were sought for only in the uplands of the interior.