the country should be boiled down for tallow when Australia is the finest country in the world for growing wool.  He hoped that the discoveries made through the instrumentality of the Royal Society would tend to prevent this.  He would now point out the route which he took in search of Burke and his party.  In his first expedition he proceeded in the direction of Central Mount Stuart, with the view of trying to discover whether Burke had gone on Stuart’s route; he succeeded in travelling about 210 miles, the first 100 of which he followed up a running stream, but after leaving its source he lost much time from the scarcity of water; for this reason, and the precious loss of time caused by the wreck of the Firefly, he deemed it prudent to return to the depot; this course was adopted with much regret, as the wet season had commenced, a continuance of which for two or three weeks would probably have enabled him to have pursued the route originally intended in search of the traces of Burke.  His first impression regarding the stream referred to was that it was created by rain, but as it was evident that no rain had fallen for months he concluded that this idea was incorrect.  He afterwards discovered that it owed its source to springs of a kind which he had never before met with, the stream from which, near its source in the valley of the Gregory River, was sufficiently powerful to turn a large mill wheel.  On his route back to the depot he found that this stream, at a point distant from Carpentaria about 80 miles, divided into two branches, one of which flowed into the Nicholson River, and the other into the Albert.  As an evidence of the superior quality of the country through which he passed on his expedition to the south-west he might mention that the horses travelled as well as if they had been stable fed.  He had travelled in Queensland and New South Wales and had never found horses stand work as well as those horses did at Carpentaria.  On returning to the depot he and his party rested for three weeks and again started to find the tracks of Burke and his companions.  They had heard that tracks had been seen by Mr. Walker on the Flinders River, they tried to follow Walker’s tracks to the Flinders, but although he had preceded them only by about two months, his tracks could not be followed, owing to the rain which had fallen.  They proceeded to the Flinders, but they could find no traces of Burke.  They followed up the river for about 280 miles through a magnificent country.  When they reached this point they left the Flinders, and in less than twenty miles further got to the watershed of the Thomson, one of the main heads of the Cooper River.  When they had proceeded about 100 miles down the valley of the Thomson they found a tree which had been marked by a companion of Landsborough’s in a former expedition several years before, which he was glad to be able to show, as a proof of his knowledge of the country, to the members of his party who knew