It has been said that of 5,710 plants
discovered, 5,440 are peculiar to that continent. The kangaroo also is
proper to Australia, and there are other animals of like kind. Of 58
species of quadruped found in Australia, 46 were peculiar to it. Sheep
and cattle that abound there now were introduced from Europe. From eight
merino sheep introduced in 1793 by a settler named McArthur, there has
been multiplication into millions, and the food-store of the Old World
begins to be replenished by Australian mutton.
The unexplored interior has given a happy hunting-ground to satisfy the
British spirit of adventure and research; but large waterless tracts,
that baffle man's ingenuity, have put man's powers of endurance to sore
trial.
The mountains of Australia are all of the oldest rocks, in which there
are either no fossil traces of past life, or the traces are of life in
the most ancient forms. Resemblance of the Australian cordilleras to the
Ural range, which he had especially been studying, caused Sir Roderick
Murchison, in 1844, to predict that gold would be found in Australia.
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