Denizens of an Australian Forest. 45. 



everything up, they are foddered with hay under shelter. 

 The sunny forest consists of Eucalypti, Melaleuca, and other 

 myrtacece, splendid casuarinas, Grevilleoe, Banksiw, the native 

 pear {IIylomelum\ the highly prized Warratah [Telopea specio- 

 sissima), the all but shadowless Acacia, the indigenous cherry 

 (Exocarpus), beautiful Papilionacece, and very peculiar Stylidice, 

 &c. All these were old acquaintances however of the Aus- 

 trian naturalists, who greeted them in this their native soil 

 with redoubled interest and astonishment. Covered with 

 blossoms they grew in wild unchecked profusion all around 

 their path, so that the very horses frequently trod them under 

 foot, scenting the air with an aroma which in Europe can 

 only be obtained by lavish expenditure. Numerous birds, 

 chiefly parrots, circled round the tops of the trees ; the crow- 

 like Strepera graculina, the bald-headed Tropidorhynchus corni- 

 culatus, the "Jackass" (Dacela gigantea), so highly regarded 

 and carefully tended by the colonists on account of its ad- 

 monishing them of the presence of poisonous serpents, quan- 

 tities of chaffinches [frigelUdw), the fan-tailed flycatcher (Mus- 

 cipiada), the Climacteris, which runs up and down the trunks 

 of the trees like our own wood -pecker, the monitor lizard, 

 four or five feet in length, which flits rapidly to and fro among 

 the trees, the prickly chameleon, and beautiful specimens of 

 fossil helix, all furnished a rich reward for the zoologist. 



After a ride of three hours the party began to approach a 

 ste^p wall of rock, where the horses were left, as they had 

 now to prosecute their journey on foot, till at length they 



