Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/37

 by the direction once taken by the lava. These waters, however, are mostly impregnated with certain gases which give them an unpleasant flavour, usually that of a hard-boiled stale egg, but by pouring the water several times from one vessel to another the gases pass off, and the water is improved. The settlers have opened some of these springs, and on one occasion they dug up some huge fossil bones of an animal, which proved, by reference to Professor Owen, to be the Diprotodon Australis, an extinct quadruped of the huge pachydermatous order, but also of marsupial character, whose remains had already been found in New South Wales. In many places of this country even salt-bush is so scanty that the plains can maintain but few live stock, and the heat in summer on these plains is so intense, and the air so arid, that thirst is almost insatiable. Such areas, Mr. Waterhouse says, may well be regarded as the source of the well-known hot winds.

The second region extends from lat. 27° 18', a little north of Hanson's Gap, to Newcastle Water, in latitude 17° 36'. The vegetation that