not so capable of agricultural labour, cutting timber, or clearing the ground; and, as the South-West requires, so it will support the reward the labor of a larger white population than the North or East.
Although exposure, at all seasons, and for a long period, must necessarily prove more or less injurious to man, yet there are few countries where less protection from the elements is required. Disease has been almost unknown among the explorers, who have traversed the country in all directions, and who, in the early days of the Colony at least, seldom carried any shelter with them. In the towns, as well as in the country, the healthy appearance of the children cannot escape notice.
The most important natural productions of the vegetable kingdom are the grasses and "scrub," which cover the plains, and form the food of the kangaroo and of the sheep and cattle pastured on them; the timber, which forms the forests of the South-West; the pine timber of the North; sandalwood, which is found scattered over the hilly districts in most parts of the Colony; and lead and copper ore, which, abounding in many other places, are at present worked only in the Champion Bay district, the Murchison river, and on the North-West Coast.
The district of forests is estimated by the Commissioner of Crown Lands to have an area of 30,000 square miles, and extends over the hill country, from the North of the Moore river to the South Coast, as well as on the plains to the South-West and to the East of King George's Sound, where it dies out. The forest trees are of the genus Eucalyptus; the approximate
