THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 97 



mostly Agarics and Polyporei. From a very tall hazel I remarked 

 great festoons of Tecoma Australia, but it was not in bloom. In 

 places hundreds of young plants of Clematis were to be seen. A 

 great nmmber of the fern trees were decorated by the trailing 

 rhizomes and bright green leaves of the so-called Victorian Stag 

 Fern, Polypodium pustulatum. Wherever the trunk of a tree 

 fern was somewhat out of the perpendicular — particularly if it bent 

 towards the south— the under side was sure to have masses of 

 long, delicate, filmy ferns (H. nitens or H. Javanicum) de- 

 pending from it. I was very anxious to get some young plants 

 of Grevillea miqueliana, but was unsuccessful in my search. 

 Nearing the source of the gully the scrub became more and more 

 sparse, until at length ferns and their congeners became the sole 

 occupiers of the valley. 



As I had now spent about four hours in the gully, and as the 

 vegetation was getting very thick and awkward to pass, I deter- 

 mined to climb the face of the hill, and found myself after nearly 

 an hour's hard work on the Mt. Useful road, about nine miles 

 north of Walhalla. The beautiful scenery of Eastern Baw Baw 

 and the valleys of the Thomson and Aberfeldy rivers were spread 

 out before me, but I was too tired to admire them, and turned my 

 steps towards the town, where I arrived safely about 5 o'clock, 

 having spent a pretty hard but very interesting and profitable ten 

 hours. 



NOTES ON THE MODE OF WOOD PETRIFACTION. 

 By James H. Wright. 

 (Communicated by T. S. Hall.) 

 (Read before Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, 14th September, 1896.^ 

 On breaking up some quartzite rocks recently I obtained a 

 specimen of petrified wood in a form rarely met with. As this 

 fossil appears to throw some light upon the manner in which 

 the petrifaction of wood is accomplished, I think it merits a 

 description. 



When found, the fossil was enclosed in a block of ferruginous 

 quartzite, of an age anterior to that of the Older Volcanic rocks 

 of South Gippsland. The fossil presented the appearance of a 

 portion of the stem or branch of a plant. It was about six inches 

 in length, with a diameter of about half an inch. It looked 

 fairly compact in structure, but when disturbed was found to 

 consist of loose silicious fibres. On submitting these to a 

 microscopic examination they were seen to be silicious casts of 

 the tracheides of a woody tissue. 



In these casts the interior of the tracheides has been faithfully 

 portrayed down to the minutest detail, the exact obverse of the 

 bordered pits appearing as disc-like protuberances upon the 



