152 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



A SHELL NEW TO VICTORIA. 

 By C. Hedley, F.L.S. 

 Some years ago my friend Mr. C. T. Musson and I found in a 

 saltwater lagoon near Sydney a tiny shell entangled in masses of 

 flannel-weed. As no known species seemed quite to tally with 

 it, we described and figured it as Eulimella moniliforme (P. L. S. 

 N.S.VV. (2), vi., 1891, p. 247, pi. xix., f. 1-3). From time to 

 time I looked for the shell in the same pool, but never saw it 

 there again. Mr. F. Billinghurst, of Castlemaine, and the Rev. 

 W. T. Whan, of Port Fairy, have, however, re-discovered it in 

 Victoria and have forwarded me specimens from a saltwater 

 lagoon at Port Fairy. Not only the species but the genus seems 

 an addition to the roll of known Victorian mollusca. Australian 

 Museum, Sydney, N.S.W., 21st January, 1895. 



Surrey Hllls Field Club. — The members of this Society 

 held a "camp-out'' at a picturesque spot on the Yarra, near 

 Lilydale, at Christmas time. Twenty-four members attended 

 and spent five days under canvas. Among other specimens ob- 

 tained were skins of the Little Bittern and Black-throated Grebe. 

 All the party returned to town thoroughly pleased with their 

 brief sojourn among the beauties of nature. — R. H. 



Lizards. — I wish to bring under the notice of readers of the 

 Naturalist that the Frilled or Dew Lizard, Amphibolurus 

 barbatus, so often seen on the vines or vine stakes in the vine- 

 yards, and very frequently killed as an ugly and dangerous 

 reptile, ought to be most carefully preserved, as it is, I believe, 

 the only living thing which eats the vine caterpillars (the larvae of 

 the moth Agarista glycine). I commend the above to the notice 

 of vignerons in the hope that they may be led to appreciate at its 

 true value the splendid service rendered to them by these little 

 harmless friends, and to preserve them from the destruction 

 which is at present dealt out to them whenever seen. — G. E. F. 

 Hill. 



Kangaroo Grass. — Our well-known Kangaroo Grass was 

 through the first half of this century known in systematic naming 

 as Anthistiria austraUs, R. Brown. This name has since become 

 a synonym of A. ciliata of the younger Linnaeus, who described 

 it from Arabia and Egypt in 1779, the Government Botanist of 

 Victoria (not without some prior surmises) demonstrating the 

 identity of the Australian with the Asiatic and African species. 

 Now, however, the Austrian botanist, Prof. Hackel, the leading in- 

 vestigator of grasses at the present time, restores for our Kangaroo 

 Grass the earliest name, Themeda triandra, given by the Danish 

 professor and traveller, Forskoel, who died at Oscherim in 1763, 

 published in 1775. Baron von Mueller intends to adopt this 

 naming of the Anthistiria for the third "Census of Australian 

 Plants," due in 1896. 



