22 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



building in holes that are too small to allow them to finish, and 

 then they have to leave them for more roomy quarters. A Platypus 

 dived near the bank as the boat approached. Cormorants were 

 exceedingly numerous, evidently showing that food was abundant. 

 We passed a towering White Gum tree, and saw two hawks' nests 

 on it, one belonging to a White Goshawk and the other to a 

 Collared Sparrowhawk, but they were well out of reach. A pair 

 of Plotus Birds were passed ; when these birds dive they do not 

 do as most other birds, head down and tail up, but they seem to 

 sink and draw their long neck under the water and so disappear. 

 Towards evening several shoals of Mullet passed up the river to 

 the falls ; they made a considerable noise as they went along, 

 swimming near the surface. Sydenham Inlet is a fine sheet of 

 water, with a picturesque bar. There were hundreds of Black 

 Duck, Chestnut-breasted Teal, and Swans on its surface, and a 

 few Pelicans, and any quantity of fish. It must be a delightful 

 place to camp for a holiday. A large nest of the White-bellied 

 Sea Eagle was seen about fifty feet up an old gum tree, and it 

 contained about a cartload of material. The Black Wattle trees 

 lining the bank were all in bloom, and looked very beautiful, and 

 the water was in many places covered with their fallen flowers, 

 but the bark strippers were busy at work taking the bark off. 

 When passing through the Gippsland Lakes again, ducks, swans, 

 and the Sombre Gallinule were seen in many thousands, and they 

 could only be described by acres of them. They kept in the 

 shallow water, and were probably here in such numbers on account 

 of the extreme dryness of the season. The flight of the Gallinule 

 is very weak. When passing up the Thompson River numbers 

 of young ducks were seen close under the river bank and among 

 the reeds, and two Copper-head and one Tiger Snake were seen 

 swimming across the river. A good many dead eels were 

 floating about on the surface of the water, and we presume that 

 they were killed by the dredge that was at work in the channel. 



A NEW ROTIFER— LACINULARIA E LONG AT A. 

 By J. Shephard. 

 (Read before Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, 13th April, 1896.^ 

 On nth January, on the occasion of a Club excursion to Heidel- 

 berg, was found a considerable number of colonies of this rotifer, 

 which I take to be new, and have ventured to name Lacinularia 

 elongata. 



Before describing it I would mention that when Hudson and 

 Gosse's " Rotifera " was published, in 1889, only two species of the 

 genus Lacinularia were mentioned — L. socialis, a widely distributed 

 form, and L. pedunculata, peculiar to Australia. Up to June, 

 1893, when Mr. Rousselet published a list of new species de- 



