AUSTRA.LA.SIA.•
Du. TAYLOR'S little book is iu its way unique, and is a far more valuable contribution to the literature of the Australian Colonies and our knowledge of them than many far more bulky volumes produced by the ordinary traveller. Dr. Taylor is a botanist and geologist, with eyes specially trained for vege- tation and the structure of the earth, but able to see other things too, and with a power of conveying general impressions of the look of things not always found iu the man of science, still less in the ordinary globe-trotter. We have been almost done to
death with the patriarch squatters who shear a thousand flocks, who have all the patriarchal hospitality and a very large share of the patriarchal land-hunger, and jealousy, and contempt of every one but themselves, and especially of the agriculturist.
We have been treated ad nauseant to the gold-digger of Bret Harte, and the sugar-planter whose philanthropic desire to flood Australia with coolies and niggers is restrained by the envy of the white working man. It is a positive relief to turn to a book which deals with the physical aspect of the country and its natural features in an exact and yet picturesque way. The key-note of the book, in this respect, may be found in the start- ling statement that Australia, instead of being a new country, is emphatically an old country. Its geology, its zoology, its flora and fauna, are not "the last result of time," but the old order which has never given place to new :— " Europe has (in places, at least, if not altogether) been many times submerged, re-elevated, crumpled up in places with mountain chains, and all the time the greater part of the Australian continent has been undisturbed And so through the later geological periods, Australia has-been a kind of zoological and botanical ark,' • Our Is'and Confinenf e Natur.dist's Holiday in Australia. By Dr. J. B. F.L S., F.G.S., bc. London: 8 vciaty for Promoting Christian Know. ledge.—Climats and Health in A urtr.claJia. Edited by Trmes Bonwick, F.B.G.B. London Searle and•Co. in which the animals abundact in Europe and America daring the Secondary epoch of geology, and the plants which were equally luxuriant there duriag the Tertiary period (all of which, however, have been long extinct), have been preserved. This is the reason why the fauna and flora of Australia differ so essentially from those of other great regions of the earth's surface. No two planets of the solar system could present a greater botanical and zoological contrast than Australia and Europe do at the present time. And yet, in the Eocene period, the conditions were E0 reversed, that when Professor Unger had to write hia celebrated essay on Tertiary fossil botany, he entitled it ' New Holland in Europe.' "
In fact, the naturalists and the geologists see in Australia the animals and plants which in Europe he only knows as fossils " restored" with infinite care by Owens and Darwins. Thus, the kangaroo represents to-day the marsupial animals which used to jump about Europe thousands of years ago, before they gave way to the placental mammals of our time.
The first mammals to be created were those now characteristi- cally Australian kinds. They made their appearance in what is now Great Britain during the Triassic period, and they continued to represent the highest forms of animal life both in Europe and America during the entire Secondary epoch. In America they are still represented by the living species of opossum." In the same way, the 140 varieties of gum-tree represent the proteacem which in geological periods used to flourish in Europe ; "and at Bournemouth and on the Continent we have a rich collection of fossil plants, many of them belonging to this very ancient order." To the naturalist, in fact, Australia is what England is to the ordinary Australian. "He regards them [the kangaroo and the gum-tree] as an educated Australian travelling for the first time regards the places and ruins with which our English history is inextricably bound up." The European world, by the way, has lost something by losing its gum-trees. There are specimens of these monsters of an early world over four hundred feet high, higher even than the Liig trees of the Yosemite Valley, in California, higher than the tallest spire in Christendom. The gum-tree, however, is rapidly disappearing even in Australia. The most characteristic mark of forest scenery there now, near the settled districts, is the collection of " white, naked vegetable ghosts,' the dead or dying gum-trees, which are " ringed " for the sake of killing them, because they are not good for pasture, as they spoil the grass by shedding their bark, and being possessed of vertical instead of horizontal leaves, afford no shelter to the sheep. What effect this will have upon the climate remains to be seen. Dr. Taylor clearly thinks it is dangerous ; but he points out that " herbaceous plants, if there be sufficient of them, will act as well as trees, perhaps better," and he hopes that the adage, " Rain follows the plough," will prove true of Australia. Happily, there are some native trees which are spared,—the black woods, for instance, a kind of acacia the oddity of which is that its foliage " is not produced by true leaves, but by flattened leaf-stalks." "Many of the acacias have acquired this habit of converting their leaf- stalks, by flattening, into true leaf functionaries, so that true leaves are not required. It is curious, however, to see how every young seedling 'blackwood,' the first year it puts forth leaves, prcd aces the ancient characteristic true pinnated leaves ; the second year there are fewer of these, and the phyllodes appear ; the third year phyllodes are in the majority, and the pianated leaves few or absent ; the fourth year probably no true leaves appear at all. The life of every young blackwood thus recapitulates the life-history of the changes which have taken place in the leaf arrangements of the tribe." But the oddest thing of all is, that if the leaf-stalks are attacked by gall insects, the trees " develop true pinnated leaves at their ends, as if they reverted to the ancestral habit of their class as soon as they discovered the newer arrangement had failed." How animals as well as plants can adapt their arrangements to their circumstances in this way is also well illustrated by the "poison plant," which grows abundantly in South Australia. Newly introduced sheep eat it and die. The older ones, bred in the place, never touch it. The rabbits, again, are over-running the country, because they have so adapted themselves to the country that they not only breed all the year round, but climb walls, run up hollow trees like opossum; and even take to the water and swim across rivers. More curious still is the fact that European trees have a little trouble at first, as they think that the Australian summer is going to be winter, and shed their leaves accordingly ; but after three or four years they change their habits, and shed their leaves in the Australian winter, which is our summer. Some of them, like the rabbits, however, are- beginning to find the winter so mild that they refuse to die down at all, and are turning into evergreens. Even the politics of the people have
changed faces. In South Australia, " the working men are Pro- tectionists. They object to imported manufactured articles even from the adjacent Colonies, because thereby wages are kept sir. On the other hand, the farmers—especially corn-growers—being short of labour, are Free-traders, for they want to get their ploughing and reaping machines as good and cheap as they can be."
We must now part from this interesting book, commending to those who seek' for fine scenery the author's description of Western Victoria, a land made beautiful by extinct volcanoes, and his description of Sydney and its neighbouring Blue Mountains. Altogether it would seem, from Dr. Taylor's account,. that the lines of the Australians are laid in pleasant places. If they can only get English fruit-trees to grow, and con- quer the tendency to drought by the extension of forests and cultivation, Australia will be the paradise of the earth.
The series of little handbooks on the climate and health of Australasia, edited by Mr. Bonwick, show, however, that the mainland of Australia is not a paradise at present. Dr. Taylor was there in the winter, and did not experience the hot winds. that blow from the central deserts, nor did he venture into the tropical Queensland. Whether the progress of settlement will improve the climate, or whether it will be stopped in the interior by the climate, is still a problem. There is some reason to think that artesian wells may make fit pasture-ground of what is now desert, and that judicious storage- of water and irrigation may make the wilderness blossom as the rose. But it is difficult to see how the tropical Northern terri- tory of South Australia or North Queensland can ever become a favourable cdantry for Europeans. But whatever may happen to these districts, it is certain that the Southern coasts, and• still more certain that the island of Tasmania, are admirably suited for Europeans ; and it is certain, above all, that New Zealand is only a more beautiful, more varied, and more fertile England in the Antipodes. An enterprising paterfamilias, seeking where to plant his boy with the best prospects for that boy's future family, would tend to select New Zealand above all lands where the flag of England waves or where English- men resort.
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