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tance from the coast and the Equator increases. The last stragglers southward reach as far as the Fortescue River, but the real aspect of a tropical flora does not come south of the Fitzroy River. Along that river there is a long stretch of forest country, but in general terms the aspect of the Kimberley region is grass land rather than forest land, and despite the abundant rainfall ferns are exceedingly rare. Phragmites Roxburghi, a tall bamboo-like reed, grows on pool margins to heights of 10 to 12 ft., and the true rice grass (Oryza sativa) occurs toward the South Australian border of the State. The Adansonia or baobab tree is one of the immigrant flora from the north, which looks strange amid so much other vegetation purely and distinctively Australian. On the east side of Cambridge Gulf a vast tract is covered with pines (Callitris), which it is now the object of a commercial company to exploit. The true caper plant (and a true bean) occurs and has spread down the nor'-west coast, and the "kapock" or silky cotton-tree (Bombax Malabarica) of India is among recent additions to the flora of this region. The "cajeput" is the Melaleuca leucodendron of India, and this and the Callitris pine are the only two really light-woods out of which the aboriginals might have constructed rafts had they a suitable substitute for cordage with which to bind the mass together. At present in tidal waters the natives cross by means of a floating log of "cajeput."

The South-West Division.—This corner of Western Australia, bounded inland by a line drawn from the Gascoyne River at Shark Bay to Cape Arid on the south coast, is at once the most distinctive and the most interesting botanic region of all Australia. Within this region are 2,013 species of plants which are never found beyond it. It is the last remnant of the primitive flora, and has survived because it is adapted to a season of seven months of copious rains, followed by five months of drought or very light coastal showers. This region possesses the most valuable timber industry of all Australia, the jarrah and the karri timbers being now household words in Europe and America. The forest trees, which reach to 30 ft. in height and upwards, are of more than thirty species, and only three of them occur elsewhere. The karri (Eucalyptus diversicolour) is one which takes first rank among the vegetable giants of the world. In extreme instances it reaches 300 ft. high, but its average height is about 200 ft., the stem being without a branch for the first three-fourths of its height, and 4 ft. in diameter when starting to branch. It is in the most humid part of the Cape Leeuwin Peninsula that the karri forest occurs and such giants grow. With increasing distance inland belt after belt of lesser rainfall is characterized by a more varied and moderate growth of tree life. A line from Cape Leeuwin north-east to the Kalgoorlie goldfield crosses these belts at right angles, each belt marking, in effect, the frequency of the incursions inland of the cyclonic atmospheric depressions, which while rounding the Cape bring rain in over the coast, the rain following in the wake of the nor'-west and south-west quadrants of the cyclonic depressions. The town of Kalgoorlie stands within the Eremian division, but at a point where the transition zone of mixed Eremian and southern primitive flora is of great width. A traveller starting from there to the coast is already 50 miles inside the belt where the mallee (the Eucalyptus oleosa) has gained ascendancy over the mulga and is itself dominated in turn by the salmon-gum (Eucalyptus salmonophloia) and Gimlet-tree (Eucalyptus salubris). If he keeps to the railway line the almost continuous dense scrub is seen to be mixed with morrell-gum (Eucalyptus longicornis) as Southern Cross is approached, and here (although the country is still Eremian in aspect) he meets with the first wheatfield, the crop being cultivated for hay. From Southern Cross the presence of the farmer becomes more and more marked, and the great wheat-growing belt of Western Australia which lasts to Northam is fairly entered. From Northam to the coast the whole route is amid the typical flora of the south-western division. If the traveller took a direct route from Kalgoorlie to Cape Leeuwin he would meet each belt in succession earlier in his journey, the autochthonous or primitive flora being fairly entered when he reaches the line of railway from York to Albany. One of the eucalypts (E. occidentalis) met with along this York-Albany railway is known as the mallet-bark tree, whose bark is so rich in tannic acid that thousands of tons of it have been stripped and sent to the coast for export. Passing the mallet-bark belt the jarrah belt is entered. Thence to the Cape the farmer's country is left behind, an exuberant tree growth is developed in the moist climate, and soil and climate are best suited to root-crops or orchard-trees. The jarrah becomes also a very large tree the nearer the coast is approached, until it in turn is dominated by the giant karri already mentioned. Grass is not plentiful in this forest country; the dense undergrowth of many kinds of Proteaceæ, Leguminosæ, and Myrtaceæ effectually occupies all space between the large trees. The Xanthorrhea and its near ally the Kingia or "Blackboy," along with Casuarina and Banksia, are common where the soil is poorest and sandy, but wherever the forest is sufficiently open to sunlight the abundance of beautiful wild-flowers is simply amazing.

Much has been said and written about the poisonous plants which occur in the native flora of Western Australia. Unquestionably the list of plants reputedly poisonous to stock is a long one. But they are not all really dangerous. Those even with the worst reputation kill the animals only when consumed in con-