Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/330

308 leeks, onions, radishes, carrots, nole-kole, parsnips, turnips, artichokes, vegetable marrow, and cauliflower; also cucumbers, pumpkins, water cresses, tomatos, cayenne pepper, and musk melon, rock melon, and water melon, in great plenty and perfection. The fruits now thriving are the grape, fig, peach, almond, apple, pear, strawberry, sloe, plum, several varieties; olive, the common and white mulberry, pine apple, plantain, sugar cane, Cape gooseberry besides these, there are several others that will ripen here, which, in colder countries, never come to perfection; such as lemons, citrons, oranges; and much praise is due to that excellent botanist Mr. Drummond for being the first in succeeding to raise these fruits.

Of the animals I shall only mention such as are used for food, beginning with the fish, which are abundant, cheap and good. Among these are, king's fish; snapper (sparus); mullet (mullus Malabaricus); whiting (eferianus) skip-jack (gasterosteus saltatrix); flounder (pleuronectes trichodactylus); herring (labrus); sting ray (ruja pastenaca); cobler (platystacus); crawfish, crabs, shrimps, oysters, muscle. &c.

Horned cattle, sheep, goats and pigs furnish the inhabitants with meat of prime quality, milk, butter and cheese. The pig was a moat useful animal; it increased rapidly, and soon supplied fresh meat for the settler, a matter of great importance in the early period of the colony, in checking the scurvy; which disease became very general from the long continued use of salt meat. The domestic fowls are turkeys, ducks, geese, pigeons, and the common fowl.

In the words kangaroo (macropus major) brush kangaroo (macropue elegans), bandicoot and opossum (petaurus), were tolerably plentiful as also the bustard (otis tarda); emeu (Rhea Novæ Hollandiæ); black swan (cygnus atratus); cockatoo (psittacus galeritus and psittacus funereus); bronze pigeon (colomba chalcoptera); wild duck (anas fera); quails (coturnix) parrot (platycercus scapulatus) parroquets, several kinds (psittacus formosus); birds of paradise (scythrops psittacus); swamp pheasant (cuculus phasianus); wattle bird (merops); snipes and several other small birds.

Three rivers intersect this spacious valley, viz. the Swan, the Canning, and the Murray. They are supposed to have their source in small streams in the Darling range of mountains, which unite, gradually increase in size, and run from east to west, in a tortuous direction, with a gentle current, into the sea; they are affected twice a day by the tides, which render the water brackish during the summer months, but it is fresh and fit for use at other seasons. They are shallow for