Handbook for Emigrants and Others Author:John Bright Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: '. ' :.": '!i lo 'i.',.J b CHAPTER III. J'KODUCTIONS OF THE SOIL. These may be divided into timber, flax, fruit, vegetables, and maize, growing upon it,... more » and cultured by the natives. The vegetation of the country is formed by various species of fern, imparting a brown hue to its scenery — their frequent dead stems and leaves deepening that shade; you miss the green swards and green clothing of England ; a plain there is a wild looking mass of fern and bushes — you meet with no pastures j a few scattered tufts of grass are to be met with — their insignificance attracts no notice. I have observed about half a dozen species. Were an animal confined to diet itself on grass, it would never have a cud to chew ; if the traveller waited until he should reach a green knoll, verily his limbs would stiffen and refuse their support, for he. might wander far and wide, and no sward would present itself, which would be ample enough for the seat of a well-fed Englishman. In Australia, the plains are covered by a high grass, a species of wild oat, embrowned by the sun, and there the eye is rarely cheered by thepleasing verdure of the mother country; and in. walking over those plains you are pestered by knocking your toes against the roots of the grass—the roots being wide apart. When the middle of summer has turned, the grass, not cut down for hay, is dried up by the sun, and if it takes fire it is not easily put out again; I doubt not that the very friction of the grass frequently ignites it, causing those vast fires so common there, but which are attributed to the natives, for their own purposes. One day, while at dinner, a neighbour's servant came to beg a stick of fire to kindle her own with; as she went along she dropped an ember a few yards from the house. Seated with my back to t...« less