24 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



of scrub bordering the road. Several nests of the beautiful little 

 Sun Birds, Cinmyris grenata, were found ; one was built within 

 two feet of my bedroom door, and the young reared during my 

 visit. In the open country several Lace Lizards, Varanus Gouldii, 

 were secured. They live in burrows in the sandy soil, generally 

 with two or three entrances ; on one occasion we saw one kill a 

 small snake about a foot long, which it would doubtless have 

 eaten if it had not been disturbed. I have often known of snakes 

 feeding on small lizards, but did not before know that these large 

 lizards turned the tables on small snakes. In the country near 

 Duaringa these reptiles were generally found in the neighbour- 

 hood of lagoons. Water lizards were found occasionally about 

 the small streams near the coast, and prettily marked lizards, 

 Varanus punctatus, about nine inches long, were often disturbed, 

 when — as with this class of reptiles — they at once took refuge up 

 a tree, carefully keeping out of view as they rapidly ascended the 

 trunk. One small lizard, popularly called the Bilbil, was heard 

 in the scrubs, especially after_ rain, uttering a loud call for such 

 a little thing ; in some places they seemed very numerous. A 

 pretty little red lizard, Liolepisma fuscum, was nearly always to 

 be seen, especially in the scrubs ; they were very fearless, and if 

 one sat quiet and made a slight rustling among the leaves, they 

 would come up to see what caused the rustling. They are very 

 fond of eating grasshoppers, and on several occasions I saw them 

 capture and devour their prey, shaking the insects when first 

 caught. Gecko Lizards were sometimes seen, but were not 

 numerous. In the creeks the blacks used occasionally to spear 

 eels and other fish, and when bathing in the creeks in the scrub 

 and sitting still for a short time small fish often came round and 

 amused themselves by nibbling one. In the saltwater inlets 

 large fish were often seen. The natives use a four-pronged spear 

 to capture them with. Beetles were not numerous at this time of 

 the year, and those we found were mostly in rotten wood, the 

 large black Cassalus teres being very common, as was the large 

 longicorn beetle, Xixuthrus nycticorax. The latter insect was 

 invariably got out of the surface roots of a palm tree, and the 

 beautiful spotted longicorn out of holes in the trunk of the 

 Pandanus Palm. We noticed the butterflies were often much 

 more plentiful in some places than others ; those seen in the 

 scrub were hard to capture. The beautiful green butterfly, 

 Ornitlioptera Jxichmondiana, was seen, but it always flew high 

 and well out of reach. The blue Papilio Ulysses was fairly 

 numerous in places, and the beautiful colours of many of the 

 Lepidoptera fliittng about added much interest to the scrub scenes. 

 Many of the moths were very large. One specimen of the Atlas 

 Moth was shot with dust shot, as it flew high up among the tree- 

 tops, being chased by numbers of small birds. Another moth 



