After a short journey, through a similar swampy country, we arrived at a more elevated and agreeable spot, when we stopped to take refreshments, made a bush fire, prepared tea, turning out our horses to graze in a fine pasturage. Many of the Eucalypti trees[52] were throwing off their dark brown and rough outer bark, appearing in a new one, of a greyish colour. The appearance of the trees, partially denuded, with strips of brown crisped bark hanging about their trunks and branches ready to fall, being a general peculiarity of the trees of the country, excites the attention of the stranger. Our road led through a broken but picturesque country, thinly timbered, and appeared good pasture land. We crossed a small river, called the _Bingham_, the country improving very much as we proceeded, abounding in beautiful park scenery, and the distant hills, rising one above the other, both thinly, and, in some situations, densely wooded, was an agreeable change to the uninteresting sameness of the country through which we had, for the most part, journeyed. The species of Eucalyptus, termed “Box Tree,” by the colonists, was most abundant: it has a rough, scaly bark, differing in that particular from most of the other species or varieties of the same genus. On the elevated spots, the _Exocarpus cupressiforme_, or native cherry-tree, was seen; but the situation appeared uncongenial to its growth; for, instead of the graceful and elegantly pending branches, with delicate dark-green foliage, such as this tree presents when growing in sheltered situations, it now had a stunted, brown, and wretched appearance. About noon, we arrived at Mr. Murphy’s station at Bingham, being seventeen miles from Squashfield. The approach to marshy land is readily indicated by the melody of the frog tribe, among which, the peculiar sound uttered by that species known by the name of the “bell frog,” is very often heard: and indeed the name is not inapplicable to the creature, the sound it produces, being very similar to a sheep-bell. Detached clumps of wire grass,[53] intermingled with the brown-coloured sedge grass,[54] and at some places reeds (_Arundo phragmites_? Linn.) also point out those watery patches which are often met by the traveller while journeying through this country. Birds were occasionally numerous, particularly when near a river; but magpies and crows were never found wanting in any part of the country, abounding every where: the former the same impudent, peculating race as at home. As for the parrot tribe, enough may be seen in a day’s ride to supply all the maiden ladies in Europe with pollies sufficient to talk or scream them to death in an inconceivably short period of time; and the peculiar noise of the _laughing_ or _feathered jackass_, (_Dacelo gigantea_,) which increases from a low to a loud thrilling gurgling laugh, was often heard.