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[Page 3]
few plants upon Van Diemens Land which had not been familiar to me in New South Wales, and have done myself the honour of submitting them to your inspection. Their state of preservation is by no means such as I could have wished, but it arises, I trust, more from my ignorance and from the inconveniences of the small sloop, than from any want of desire to present them to you in a more acceptable form. The box which contains the plants, contains also some stoney masses apparently formed of calcareous and siliceous earths, and which are, most certainly, parts of the stems of large brushwood in a petrified state; but how they came so seems to be from the situation of the place they were found in almost inexplicable. Some short pieces of the same brushwood in its natural, unpetrified state also accompany them.
Two skins and a scull [skull] of the wombat a quadruped unknown here until the middle of the year 1797. It was first found upon Furneaux's Islands in latitude 20º ½ So. by the crew of a ship that was wrecked there. It is, however, now known to inhabit the Mountains which lie a few miles west of this settlement.
As I wish to arrange the account of the wombat and of the petrifactions in the best form I am able I beg to defer doing it until my arrival in England.
The box holds also the skins of two birds; one a