THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 149 



into the valley of the River Thomson ; when I say road I mean 

 an abominable track which winds round a huge spur, and which 

 is bounded on one side by an almost inaccessible mountain, and 

 on the other by such a descent that, if by any mischance the 

 coach were to leave the track, it would certainly go down to the 

 bed of the gully some six hundred feet beneath. However, we 

 arrived safely at the river, which is here spanned by a wooden 

 bridge. This part of the Thomson was a place of importance 

 some years ago, in consequence of the finding of a large copper 

 lode, but the fall in the price of that metal threw it out of the 

 market, and the busy hundreds of miners and woodmen had to 

 seek elsewhere for employment. 



After a long, tiresome pull up the cutting we arrive at the top 

 of the spur, where we obtain a lovely view of Mount Baw Baw in 

 the distance, and below us the basin of the Thomson, whose 

 sparkling waters could be seen gleaming in the evening sun, as it 

 wound its devious way through the wood-clad hills. 



A smart journey along the top of the spur soon brought us to 

 the old goldfield at the " Happy," from whence we bowled down 

 the long spur into the deep valley or gorge of Stringer's Creek, on 

 the banks of which Walhalla is built. The town is a curious 

 straggling mass of houses built in every conceivable situation. A 

 few shops, private houses, and places of business, together with 

 the buildings in connection with the Long Tunnel mine, occupy 

 the very narrow space left between the bed of the creek and the 

 abruptly rising hills, and extend up the valley for about two miles. 

 All the other houses are built on shelves cut out of the sides of 

 the hills. The approaches to these houses are either up steep 

 paths cut out of the hill, or they are placed near some of the 

 numerous wood tramways. 



Unfortunately for the collecting of fungi, the weather had been 

 so dry that I gave it up at once as a bad job. So I turned my 

 attention to looking up four groups of animal life, namely — 

 worms, frogs, lizards, and Planarians. The drought had forced 

 the worms into the ground, but I got some very large specimens 

 by breaking up the rotten logs, which are very numerous in the 

 upper portions of both branches of the creek. As I know very 

 little about either of these groups of animals, I shall content 

 myself by giving a detailed list, at the end of the paper, of the 

 species which I brought down and handed over to Prof. Spencer. 

 Frogs were fairly plentiful, and I found a good many on the sides 

 and tops of the hills as well as in the bed of the creek. A few, 

 if not true tree-frogs, were at any rate discovered on tree ferns, 

 many feet from the ground ; their favourite haunts were under 

 fallen logs, in places well sheltered by ferns. In one species of 

 brown speckled frog I observed a curious habit. I encountered 

 several of them amongst some ferns along one of the wood 



