Page:The Emu volume 20.djvu/195

 "New Records for South-Western Australia," by W. B. Alexander, Emu, xv., p. 25, 1915.

"Procellariiformes in Western Australia," by W. B. Alexander, Emu, XV., p. 182, 1916.

The following ornithologists have at various times contributed notes which have appeared in The Emu:— A. W. Milligan, T. Carter, D. Le Souëf, S. Le Souëf, C. P. Conigrave, E. A. Le Souëf, and W. B. Alexander.

Early records of the natural history of Western Australia have been collected by the writer and published in a series of articles on "The History of Zoology in Western Australia" in the Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia.

For the purposes of this paper the Swan River district may be defined as that portion of Western Australia bounded on the east by the Darling Range escarpment, on the north by the Gingin Brook, and on the south by the Murray River. The islands off the coast are also included.

The district thus forms a portion of the coastal plain of Western Australia, whose surface consists entirely of geologically recent beds. Two main belts of country may be distinguished—first, the sandy country extending from the foot of the Darling Ranges to the coastal hills; and, second, the hills of coastal limestone running along the coast and in some cases actually separated from the coast to form islands, of which the two principal ones are Rottnest Island and Garden Island.

The sandy country is partially covered with stunted jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) and red gum (E. calophylla) trees in its drier parts, and has also stretches of fairly open heathy country. Much of it is swampy, and in these parts, where water stands in the winter, the characteristic trees are Christmas-tree (Nuytsia floribunda) and paper-bark (Melaleuca). The coastal hills are usually treeless on their summits near the sea, with peppermint-trees (Agonis flexuosa) in the valleys. Their eastern slopes are characterized by tuart (Eucalyptus gomphocephala), which, in the valleys, grows into a fine forest tree. The line of junction between the coastal hills and sandy plains is occupied by a series of large swamps or lakes extending more or less continuously from north to south, some of which have been drained since the country was settled. They almost all are fringed with great belts of reeds, and are thus magnificent homes for water-birds. The best known of these lakes are Lake Yanchep, Lake Pinjar, and Herdsman's Lake, but there are scores of smaller ones, and the estuary of the Swan River itself no doubt occupies one of these lake basins, from which an outlet has been cut to the sea at Fremantle, so that it is now salt.

Four rivers flow across the district, coming down through gorges in the Darling Ranges and flowing fairly directly across the plain.