<hw>Scrub</hw>, <i>n</i>. country overgrown with thick bushes. Henry Kingsley's explanation (1859), that the word means shrubbery, is singularly misleading, the English word conveying an idea of smallness and order compared with the size and confusion of the Australian use. Yet he is etymologically correct, for <i>Scrobb</i> is Old English (Anglo-Saxon) for shrub; but the use had disappeared in England.
1833. C. Sturt, `Southern Australia,' vol. i. c. i. p. 21:
"We encamped about noon in some scrub."
1838. T. L. Mitchell,' Three Expeditions,' vol. i. p. 213:
"A number of gins and children remained on the borders of the scrub, half a mile off."
1844. J A. Moore, `Tasmanian Rhymings' (1860), p. 13:
"Here Nature's gifts, with those of man combined,
Hath [sic] from a scrub a Paradise defined."
1848. W. Westgarth, "Australia Felix,' p. 24:
"The colonial term scrub, of frequent and convenient use in the description of Australian scenery, is applicable to dense assemblages of harsh wild shrubbery, tea-tree, and other of the smaller and crowded timber of the country, and somewhat analogous to the term jungle."
1859. H. Kingsley, `Geoffrey Hamlyn,' vol. ii. p. 155 [Footnote]: