Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — CompleteSturt, Charles
History
Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Complete
Sturt, Charles
New South Wales -- Discovery and exploration; Sturt, Charles, 1795-1869
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 Wombat Brush, at the two passes on
the great south road, over a great extent of country to the N.W. of Yass
Plains, and at Blackheath on the summit of the Blue Mountains. On the
other hand, those open grassy and park-like tracts, of which so much has
been said, characterise the secondary ranges of granite and porphyry. The
trees most usual on these tracts, were the box, an unnamed species of
eucalyptus, and the grass chiefly of that kind, called the oat or forest
grass, which grows in tufts at considerable distances from each other,
and which generally affords good pasturage. On the richer grounds the
angophora lanceolata, and the eucalyptus mammifera more frequently point
out the quality of the soil on which they grow. The first are abundant on
the alluvial flats of the Nepean, the Hawkesbury and the Hunter; the
latter on the limestone formation of Wellington Valley and in the better
portions of Argyle; whilst the cupressus calytris seems to occupy sandy
ridges with the casuarina. It was impossible that these broad features
should have escaped observation: it was naturally inferred from this, that
the trees of New South Wales are gregarious; and in fact they may, in a
great measure, be considered so. The strong line that occasionally
separates different species, and the sudden manner in which several
species are lost at one point, to re-appear at another more distant,
without any visible cause for the break that has taken place, will furnish
a number of interesting facts in the botany of New South Wales.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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