On the point dividing the upper branches of the river some coarse sand was washed up, which on examination was found to be of a granitic character, clearly showing the primary formation of the country through which the Adelaide flowed.  The only rocks noticed in the parts traversed by the boats were, as I have before said, of red porous sandstone.  The smoke of several large fires was observed up the country, but none of the natives were seen.

MONKEY-BIRDS.

Towards the upper part of the river they noticed a strange bird, very much like a guineafowl in size and manner of running along the ground.  The colour was speckled white and brown.  This, doubtless, from Mr. Bynoe’s description of one he wounded on the coast in the neighbourhood of the Adelaide, must have been the Leipoa ocellata of Gould, one of the mound or tumuli-building birds, first seen in Western Australia by Mr. George Moore, and afterwards on the North-west coast, and in South Australia by Captain Grey.  Although known to range over a large expanse of the continent, this was the first time it was discovered in Northern Australia.

In the reaches where the bamboo grew, flights of large vampires (resembling the Pteropus rubricollis of Geoff.) were met with:  they kept continually flying to and fro close over the boats as they passed up, making a screeching disagreeable noise, which, however, was far less unpleasant than the mildewy odour with which they filled the air, calling to mind the exclamation placed by our immortal bard in the mouth of Trinculo.  The heavy flap of the leathern wings of these monkey-birds, as the men called them, was singular, while sometimes a flight would darken the verdure of a bamboo, which, yielding to their weight, bent low, as if before a passing gust of wind.  To fix themselves appeared always a difficult, and was certainly a noisy operation, each apparently striving to alight upon the same spot.  They first cling to the bamboo by means of the long claw, or hook attached to the outer edge of the wing, and then gradually settle themselves.

The river swarmed with alligators.  Fish also abounded; and in the salt water, a kind commonly known in the river Plate by the name of Cat-fish, is plentiful.  One that we caught was of the enormous weight of twenty pounds.  A large kind of dark bream of excellent flavour was taken in fresh water.

WOOD-DUCKS.

Many of the reaches also swarmed with wildfowl, consisting almost wholly of ducks, which, from a habit of perching on the trees, have received the name of wood-ducks.  They were very different and far superior in plumage to those found on the south-eastern parts of the continent, and as they have not yet been numbered among the Australian birds so vividly described by Mr. Gould, we may venture to be somewhat minute in describing them.