Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

large and excellent pastures form a prominent feature in the aspect of the country, yet a heavy English sward is seldom found. Flax, tobacco, a species of cotton, tares, indigo, chicory, trefoil, and burnet (an excellent substitute for tea), are natural productions. No native trees bearing edible fruit have been found. The peppermint-tree affords an oil efficacious int cholera; the leaves of the tea-plant are not much inferior to those of China; and the bark of the wattle is useful for tanning. European fruits, however, supply the absence of indigenous specimens: the grape, the apple, the peach, the cherry, the apricot, the nectarine, the greengage, the pear, the mulberry, the raspberry, the gooseberry, the currant, the strawberry, the quince, the walnut, the chestnut, all thrive remarkably well-some of them requiring no care whatever in their cultivation. The larger number of European vegetables thrive in the Australian colonies equally as well as the fruits. Most of the Australian trees are of hard wood, but a very large number are of great utility for ship-building, and also for ordinary and ornamental purposes. Many of the trees are remarkable for their vast height, or enormous dimensions. The Eucalyptus globulus of La Billardière (principally found in Van Diemen's Land) has been observed to

L

attain a height of 150 feet, with a girth near the base of from 25 to 40 feet. Lieutenant Breton mentions one which he saw of a triangular form, one face of which was 18 feet in width, another 19, and the third 22, giving a total girth of 60 feet; and at Illawarra there

[graphic][merged small]

is a resting-place for travellers, half-way up the mountain, called the Big tree, which, although the greater part has been consumed by

fire, is still 100 feet high, and three men on horseback may ride into the hollow of the tree without dismounting, and there take shelter. The New Holland lily grows to the height of 20 or 25 feet, bearing on its crown blossoms of the richest crimson, each six inches in diameter, from which beautiful birds sip a delicious honey; the leaves are very numerous, swordshaped, and sometimes six feet long. Several specimens of the extraordinary nettle-tree are 20 feet in height, of proportionately robust habit, and its leaves so highly stimulating as to blister severely on the slightest touch. The fern-trees are also remarkable, and extremely beautiful; their rough stems rising to the height of from 15 to 20 feet, and then throwing out a number of leaves in every direction, each 5 or 6 feet, or more, in length, and exactly similar in appearance to those of the common fern.

The Zoology of Australia is more singular than beautiful. It possesses no large animals, and but few varieties; and the attention is much more likely to be arrested by the peculiar habits and structure of the subjects themselves, than by the elegance of their forms, or the richness of their colours. As we have already mentioned, Australia has been termed the land of anomalies, and the zoology of the continent

is certainly no exception to the fact; for Nature, in the creation of such forms as she appropriated to this region, seems to have determined to mark them with some peculiar character inconsistent with those rules she had adopted in the formation of all her other productions. That form, for instance, which in other parts of the world she has confined to the smallest races of quadrupeds-the rats and the dormice-is here bestowed upon the kangaroos, the largest tribe of four-footed animals yet discovered on this continent; but these wonderful creatures, instead of fabricating warm and skilful nests beneath the earth, for the protection of their young, in like manner to all other mouse-like quadrupeds, are provided with a natural nest in the folds of their own skin, where the young are sheltered and protected, until they are able to provide for themselves. The great kangaroo is, in fact, the largest and most typical quadruped of the whole Australasian range: the total absence of such animals as lions, tigers, deer, oxen, horses, bears-in short, of all those races spread over the rest of the world, is the most striking feature in the zoology of this continent. It is further remarkable that nearly all the quadrupeds either actually belong, or are intimately related to the Glires of Linnæus. Twothirds of the Australian quadrupeds make their

way by springing in the air. It may also be mentioned that out of fifty-eight species of mammalia found in Australia, forty-six are peculiar to it, and twelve only are found in other regions. Even out of these twelve, four are seals, and five are whales. As already indicated, however, kangaroos are almost the only important animals: there are many varieties of this animal, from the "kangaroo mouse," which is about the size of a small rabbit, to the "forester," which stands from four to five feet high. The bound of the kangaroo is prodigious, sometimes exceeding twenty paces; and this can be kept up for a considerable time, so as to enable the animal to distance the swiftest greyhound. Within the marsupial pouch the careful mother shelters her helpless. young, letting them out by day to graze on the tender herbage, or carefully conveying them across rivers or through forests, when pursued by her enemies, until they are able to provide for their own sustenance and safety. The kangaroo has rarely more than two at a birth, and is an extremely timid animal, unless when hard pressed for life, when it will set its back against a tree, boldly await the dogs, and rip them up with its hind claws, or give them a formidable squeeze with its fore-arms, until the blood gushes from the hound's nostrils. Sometimes

« AnteriorContinuar »