Page:Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies.djvu/192

152 we found the gum of the Acacia serviceable in allaying hunger.

When at Macquarie Plains, upon the Derwent, we visited a fossil tree, which is imbedded in basalt, in the point of a hill, near a cascade, in a creek that empties itself into the river. The tree is erect, and may possibly prove to be standing where it has grown. About ten feet of its height are laid bare by removing the basalt, which is here porous and cracked. The tree is about ten feet in circumference at the lowest part that is bare. Some of the exterior portion has become like horn-coloured flint: much of the internal part is opaque, white, and fibrous: some portions of it split like laths, others into pieces like matches, and others are reducible to a substance resembling fibrous asbestos. The grain of the wood and of the bark is very distinguishable. Fragments of limbs of the same kind, have been found contiguous to the tree; and pieces of petrified wood of similar appearance are abundantly scattered over the neighbourhood. The structure of this tree is such as is considered to belong to coniferous trees; the only one of which, now found in this Island, of size equal to this petrefaction, is the Huon Pine.

In the neighbourhood of Ross, as well as near Bothwell, there are salt springs; and in some of these places there is fresh water, nearer the surface than the salt. On Salt Pan Plains, there is a small, salt lagoon, that dries up in summer, when the salt is collected, by the shepherds in the vicinity, and sold for about a halfpenny a pound. Several marine plants grow around this lagoon. When visiting it, we saw five Eagles soaring over some flocks of sheep. We also fell in with a young lamb that had had its eyes picked out by a crow. This is a circumstance of common occurrence, and the eagles carry off the lambs that have been killed by this means, as well as living ones. Probably similar circumstances occurring in Palestine, might give rise to the denunciation in the book of Proverbs, "The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it."

On speaking to one of our acquaintance, from near