162 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



Astur NovcB-Hollandice, sub-sp. lencosovius, was noticed sailing 

 along on the look-out for some unfortunate bird. Sulphur-crested 

 Cockatoos were also conspicuous against the dark green as they 

 flew over the scrub. The various shades of green made the scrub 

 look very pretty, especially with the tops of the graceful palms 

 and the ferns showing through ; the latter have very thin stems 

 with a hard exterior, and are rarely straight, and grow to the 

 height of thirty feet. Pigeons seem fond of building their fragile 

 nests on their slender crowns. The Victorian tree ferns have 

 thick stems, and are mostly straight, and have far larger crowns 

 than these. 



Very few insects were noticed. The small black ant was very 

 plentiful, also a much larger black variety which canies its 

 abdomen turned up over its back. It has long legs, the lower 

 half of which is yellow. The insect can travel very fast when 

 disturbed, but made no attempt to bite one — like the green ant, 

 for instance. One kind of lizard was seen, and only one snake 

 during the whole of our trip, and that a native reported to have 

 seen going under a rock, which from his description was probably 

 a Black Snake, Pseudechys porphyriacus. In a small patch of 

 scrub well up the mountain side a pair of Newton's Bower-Birds 

 were noticed and one secured, but the male was in immature 

 plumage. We did not see any of their wonderful bowers. 



The perfume of some of the flowers on the scrub trees was very 

 sweet, and one small orchid had its petal on a curious hinge, 

 which enabled the said petal to move backward and forward as 

 the breeze moved the flower. On our way back we passed under 

 a tree laden with white sweet-scented flowers. The honey-eaters 

 were very busy securing the honey with thin brush-tipped tongues ; 

 one or two were shot for identification, but the others were little 

 disturbed by the sound of the gun. The fallen birds were often 

 difficult to find among the rocks, unless one saw exactly where 

 they fell. A honey-eater was also noticed busy having a bath in a 

 pool of water which was held in a shallow hollow in the fork of 

 a tree, about 30 feet from the ground. It was curious to notice 

 how the roots of some of the trees grew downwards round the 

 rocks, and as they grew spread out into a regular network, 

 clinging on to the face of the boulder. Sometimes they reached 

 the soil, but at other times the distance was too great. The 

 shade caused by the dense foliage of the trees above enabled 

 many plants to obtain sufficient moisture on the rocks with little 

 soil, that otherwise would have been burnt up and destroyed. 

 The effect is occasionally noticed where a large tree has fallen and 

 so made an opening for the sun to penetrate. Several times we 

 noticed what I would term rats' feeding-places, where they had 

 gathered together the hard-shelled native almonds and other nuts, 

 and made a little heap of their empty husks, generally alongside 



