56S BOTANICAL IS'OTES OX QUEEXSLAXD, 



are poor", and stunted, but grow with a very straggling virgate 

 habit out of a thick tenacious yellow clay. One remarkable 

 feature in these scrubs is that they are infested with the venomous 

 Hoploceplialus curtus to an extraordinary extent when the water 

 has dried and the grass is long. 



In Tasmania there are thickets or scrubs of various kinds. On 

 the north side of the Island the dense growth of the Pine 

 Artlirotaxis cupressioides, Dom., makes some of the mountains 

 quite inaccessible. On the south-east side the spurs of Mount 

 Adanson and the Hartz Mountains between Port Esperance and 

 !Recherche Bay are clothed with a scrub of Pomaderris elliptica, 

 or as they term it pear-tree. It grows in close masses of saplings 

 some 15 or 20 feet in height and scarcely any one would make a 

 way through such a thicket unless with an axe. The same kind 

 of scrub is seen on the sj^urs of the Dandenong Eanges near 

 Melbourne as well as on the south- cast coasts of JSTew South 

 "Wales. At Cape Otway and in some portions of the above 

 Dandenong Mountains there is a scrub of beech {Fac/us cunning- 

 liami) a lofty tree with most graceful myrtle-like foliage of every 

 variety of colour. Then there are fern tree scrubs in the AYestern 

 Port, Gipps Land, and other districts where the fern tree is 

 principally Ahopliila exceJsa. There are also fern tree scrubs in 

 Tasmania, but these are principally constituted by the shady 

 DicJhSonia aniarctica. 



AVith a knowledge of this diversity in the composition of what 

 is called a scrub, it will not surprise us to learn that the masses 

 of vegetation which go by that name in Queensland are of a quite 

 peculiar character. I have already in the course of these notes 

 dealt with the river scrubs on the eastern side of the watershed. 

 These are properly speaking forests, tropical forests with the 

 character of the Indian jungles. They comprise very large trees 

 with an undergrowth of ferns, and in the tropics abundance of 

 Calamus australis a climbing palm with long thoruy tendrils. 

 "Without a scrub-knife, an instrument which is a combination of 



