128 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



land mountains. As we proceed inland to the Great Dividing 

 Range the altitude increases. Thus " Big Ben " stands at about 

 1,000 to 1,200 feet, while the recently-discovered giants beyond 

 Marysville are found at about 2,600 feet. Perhaps early geological 

 history has something to do with the question. If we travel by 

 the Gippsland railway we go, as it were, along a great valley, 

 between the Baw Baw mountains on the one hand and the South 

 Gippsland mountains on the other. If we stop at Beaconsfield, 

 at a mile from the station, on the first rise of the hill, we come to 

 a deposit of white sand, of considerable area. Eighteen feet down 

 and we are not at the bottom of it. Higher up the hill, towards 

 Upper Beaconsfield, a similar formation is found. If we go to 

 Pakenham station, seven miles further, and walk a few miles 

 towards the Gembrook hills, we find another similar deposit of 

 pure sand, suggesting that the ocean once washed the shores of 

 these spurs of our Gippsland mountains ; but I am unaware 

 whether a similar formation exists on the opposite side of the 

 valley, along the spurs of the South Gippsland ranges. 



In placing the foregoing information before the Field Natu- 

 ralists' Glub I must be permitted to state that, while making our 

 giant trees a favourite study, I did not do so as a botanist, as I 

 have but a superficial knowledge of that branch of science. It is 

 my profession as a photographer which has continually brought 

 me into close contact with them, and, being of an inquiring and 

 observant temperament, I have gradually been led to make a 

 study of them. If the few facts I have now stated be the means 

 of awkening official and public interest in them, and lead to the 

 collecting and recording of information for the benefit of future 

 generations, then I will consider myself well repaid in the interest 

 that has been aroused. 



WILSON'S PROMONTORY AS A NATIONAL PARK. 



The proposal to reserve Wilson's Promontory as a National Park 

 has now been before the public for a period of nearly twenty 

 years. I can find no record as to who originated the scheme, but 

 tradition in the Club ascribes to Mr. J. B. Gregory the credit of 

 bringing it forward, and of long and strenuously advocating the 

 cause. In the second volume of the Victorian Naturalist will be 

 found an account of a trip made to the Promontory at Christmas, 

 1884. The party consisted of Mr. Gregory, Mr. A. H. S. Lucas, 

 and Mr. Robinson. They went from the Trafalgar railway station to 

 the lighthouse. Probably the idea of the reservation then arose in 

 their minds. The almost complete isolation of the locality, with 

 its dense fern gullies and occasional well-wooded hills, would 



