THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 33 



the altitude of the ridge being, I should judge, somewhere about 

 3,000 feet. I have recently paid a visit to the scene of the 

 afifair, and was much struck by the devastation which has been 

 created in what was previously a very ordinary little fern gully, 

 and possibly a short description of it may interest some of the 

 members of the Field Naturalists' Club. 



The flow of water commenced high up the range, but not quite 

 at the top, and came down two narrow gullies which run nearly 

 parallel with each other and eventually join. The hill here is 

 very steep, and the force of the water must have been something 

 tremendous, as not only is every vestige of vegetation washed 

 away, but towards the junction the bed of each gully has been 

 torn out to a depth of 4 to 6 feet, while up on the banks are 

 barricades of huge tree trunks, roots, and tree ferns. After the 

 junction the descent is more gradual, and the gully is wider. As 

 before, all vegetation has been washed out, and the gully has been 

 filled with granite rubble from the size of a cricket ball upwards. 

 This rubble varies in width from 20 to 50 feet, and continues for 

 perhaps a mile and a half, the same barricades of tree trunks, &c., 

 being met with here and there. It ends quite abruptly at a point 

 from which the descent becomes very gradual, and here the water 

 evidently spread out, as the first signs of silt and sand are met 

 with, but the bulk of this must have been carried right down into 

 the Little River, which will account for the muddied appearance 

 of that stream afterwards. 



What strikes the spectator more than anything is the way big 

 lumps of granite have been rolled about like so many marbles and 

 tree trunks washed about like saplings. Another curious feature 

 is that the gullies on either side, at comparatively short distances, 

 have not been touched. Both the force and the volume of the 

 water must have been enormous, and though I understand such 

 occurrences are not unknown in this State, I doubt whether many 

 have left such traces of wreckage behind them. Probably the 

 whole thing was over in a quarter of an hour, but just now that 

 gully looks as if a company had been hydraulic sluicing there for 

 years. 



West Australian Birds. — An extensive paper, containing 

 notes on some seventy species of West Australian birds; from 

 the pen of Mr. Robert Hall, appears in the Ibis for January 

 and April, 1902. He also contributed to the Emu, April, 1902, 

 a paper on " Some Bird-Skins from the Fitzroy River, North- 

 West Australia." 



Ferns. — In continuation of his "Studies in the British Flora," 

 Mr. R. L. Praeger writes in Knowledge for May, 1902, on 

 " Ferns," and gives a well-illustrated article on the life-history of 

 this favourite group of plants, many of his remarks being appli- 

 cable to our Victorian species. 



