454 ON THE DECAY OF CERTAIN SPECIES OF EUCALYPTI. 



From my observations it appeared to me that at certain periods 

 of the year, the leaves of one or other of these trees became more 

 palatable to the opossums and they would i-esort night after night 

 to one or more of them in numbers, (I have counted over 30 at 

 one time) until almost all the leaves were devoured, and what few 

 remained were jagged and mutilated. The opossums would then 

 seek fresh trees, and in the course of a month or so, the first ones 

 would throw out a profusion of tender shoots which would again 

 attract the opossums until the whole were eaten off and so on for 

 some two or three months, the growth of shoots becoming less each 

 time, until the tree succumbed and died of exhaustion. 



The side of the tree up which the opossum ascended (always the 

 same) would be deeply furrowed by their claws, the branches 

 stained, and in fact the whole tree strongly impregnated with the 

 foetid odour of the urine of these animals, which it is possible may 

 also have had an injurious efiect on the trees. As far back as the 

 period I have mentioned hundreds of ti'ees were killed from the 

 above cause, and the efiect, then unnoticed by the casual observer 

 in the boundless expanse of forest, has in the course of years become 

 apparent to everyone. As I before remarked it was chiefly E. 

 rostrata and E. mellidora that were attacked, and I have since 

 seen numbers of the same trees, in N. S. Wales killed from the 

 same cause, whilst it is worthy of mention that although both are 

 plentiful in the vicinity of Melbourne, none are observed to die 

 there in a similar manner, which I am of opinion is due to the fact 

 that there are no opossums there. 



