Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/83

Rh that henceforth the peripatus will be more esteemed than ever in the scientific world.

We said it was the gold rush that created, or at least accelerated the agricultural development of Western Australia. The influx of population, with the direct aim of gold-digging, brought in its train a dependent and attendant crowd of settlers to minister to its needs by the provision of agricultural produce, meat, flour, butter, and vegetables. Moreover, many of those who had come out to seek gold in the mines, sought it instead in the fruits of the earth, in grain, and in hay, in fruit and corn-growing. In the extreme north, known as the Kimberley country, cattle are raised; south of that, in the south-west pastoral district, sheep are the principal stock. The wheat belt, as it is called, is a strip of country stretching about five hundred miles from the Murchison River in the north, to the south coast east of Albany. But the limits of the wheat-growing area cannot at present be defined, the riverless districts of Australia are not desert in the sense that the Sahara is a desert; strips throughout the so-called desert are pastoral country on which grass will grow, supporting a more or less sparse vegetation. After rain the desert is clothed with vegetation, and the permanent plants depend on small local supplies of