Undoubtedly this is a principal cause for the deficiency in question.

There is no part of the world in which fires create such havoc as in New South Wales and indeed in Australia generally.

The climate, on the one hand, which dries up vegetation, and the wandering habits of the natives on the other, which induce them to clear the country before them by conflagration, operate equally against the growth of timber and underwood.
CAUSE OF THIS.
But there is another circumstance that appears to have escaped Mr.Dawson's observation; which is the actual property of the trees themselves, as to the quantity of vegetable matter they produce in decay.
Being a military man, I cannot be supposed to have devoted much of my time to agricultural pursuits; but it has been obvious to me, as it must have been to many others, that in New South Wales, the fall of leaves and the decay of timber, so far from adding to the richness of its soil, actually destroy minor vegetation.

This fact was brought more home to me in consequence of its having been my lot to spend some months upon Norfolk Island, a distant penal settlement attached to the Government of Sydney.
There the abundance of vegetable decay was as remarkable as the want of it on the Australian Continent.

I have frequently sunk up to my knees in a bed of leaves when walking through its woods; and, often when I placed my foot on what appeared externally to be the solid trunk of a tree, I have found it yield to the pressure, in consequence of its decomposition into absolute rottenness.