Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Volume I — John Shaqi
Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Volume ISturt, Charles
History
Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Volume I
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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