114 Kelly, From Healesville to Mount Donna-Buang. [^October' 



to our left front, where the Divide lay behind Mount Riddell, 

 it was massed in dazzling whiteness in the sun, which, about 

 II o'clock, shone brightly. Each step the white carpet became 

 thicker, and covered the horses' hoofs, but those ahead had 

 trampled a trail for us. Here we came to a magnificent grove 

 of the Mountain Wattle, or Hickory, as it is sometimes called. 

 Acacia penninervis, somewhat resembling, and taken by many 

 to be an alpine form of, A. pycnantha. To our left, which 

 would be about east by north, ran a deep valley running almost 

 east and west, and, strange as it seemed to me, the bottom of 

 it was filled with snow like a frozen river, whilst on the lower 

 hillsides beyond there was none. The snow on our track soon 

 became much deeper — almost to the horses' knees. The lesser 

 logs were covered save where the foremost horses had bared 

 them. The larger ones were banked up ; sometimes two lying 

 parallel made jumping a care. There was little opportunity 

 for botanical observation, save of the larger objects, and none 

 for examination. 



Fine old beeches, Fagiis Cunninghami, hoar-tipped and 

 festooned with moss, the dark green of the leaves brightened 

 with weepers of the moss Hypnum denticulatum and blue with 

 lichens, now came in view. The eucalypts were tall, white- 

 stemmed, and staggy-topped, many of them E. regnans It 

 mattered little, however, whether it was the fallen trunk of 

 this forest giant that threatened to bring one's mount a cropper 

 or the standing one of the E. goniocalyx that almost brushed 

 him from the saddle ; both gums are there in abundance. I 

 have forgiven the timber cutter for calling the last-named tree 

 " blue gum.'" We passed many saplings of this species, and I 

 have seen nothing so like the juvenile forms of E. globulus as 

 these, save E. globulus itself. The stems were squared, the 

 angles flanged with rims of decurrent bark — the boughs and 

 branchlets too. The rounded young leaves, the long, broad, 

 sickle-like adolescent foliage, completed the resemblance to the 

 true blue gum, a darker green replacing the glaucous colouring. 

 Taking these young trees individually, lacking fruits or flowers, 

 one might be excused for saying that E. globulus flourishes on 

 the flanks of Donna-Buang. It is worth the journey to see 

 these saplings only. 



Near to the track as it passes through the clumps of beeches 

 are a few other trees, which, if they be a species of Notelsea, 

 are the largest I have seen ; but at this part the exigencies of 

 this journey gave no chance of making sure of their identity, 

 and I would not like to say they were not Persoonia arbor ea. 

 After passing these, and we had seen Warburton lying in the 

 Yarra valley on our right, lit by the lamps of Phoebus's chariot, 

 snow from two to three feet deep lay ahead, and on either side. 



