THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST, 151 



At another spot further along a considerable stretch of the rock 

 platform can be utilized for vehicular traffic in the hands of a 

 careful driver, and so save the heavy pulling on the soft sandy 

 road on top of the cliffs. The one fairly extensive flat piece of 

 land in the district covers an area of about loo acres, and 

 extends back from Point Bunbury along the Barrum-Barrum 

 River. 



Unfortunately for the naturalist, large areas of the main range 

 and the principal spurs have been devastated by fire, and thus 

 denuded of much of the original timber trees, which have been 

 replaced by a dense growth of young trees and scrub where not 

 kept down by artificial means. The numerous creek gorges are, 

 however, often well filled with vegetation of various kinds, in 

 which the Valley Tree Fern, Dicksonia hillardieri, predominates. 

 Such are the steep gullies of Carisbrook, Nettle or Sugar-loaf, 

 Whalebone, Smythe's, Flatbottom, Browne's, Petticoat, Skene's, 

 Stony, Wild Dog, and Cawood's, taking them in their order from 

 north-east to south-west. Further south are the valleys of the 

 Barrum-Barrum and Elliott Rivers and Blanket Creek, which are 

 more open. 



At Cape Patten, where a spur from a lateral ridge ends 

 abruptly at the shore line in a perpendicular cliff, there are two 

 interesting points. One, locally known as the " Blowhole," is a 

 fault or crevice in the rock platform, some thirty feet wide, 

 which precludes further progress along the shore at the foot of 

 the cliffs, here about 130 feet in height. The sea at times rushes 

 in here with great force and deluges the face of the cliff above. 

 The other is a cave, situated in the rocky extremity of the Cape, 

 and reached only by keeping above the cliff, and then descending 

 on the further side of the " Blowhole." The entrance, only a few 

 feet in width, is about twenty-five feet high. Just inside is a 

 vertical rock-face some ten feet high which almost bars the way, 

 but on this being surmounted the visitor finds himself in a dark 

 chamber about fifty feet high. The walls are damp, but not wet, 

 and on striking a light the sandstone was seen to be coated with 

 a bluish-green coloured substance hard to the touch. On 

 knocking off a portion of this it was found to be a mineral 

 incrustation about an eighth of an inch in thickness. Some 

 specimens were submitted to Mr. F. Chapman, A.L.S., on our 

 return to town, who reports that it is " a whitish incrustation of 

 earthy gypsum (really finely crystalline) superficially impregnated 

 with alga cells, some of which show subdivision into four daughter 

 cells. The alga imparts a vivid green colour to the incrustation, 

 making it appear at first sight as of a mineral nature." The alga 

 we have since determined as a species of Pleurococcus. Here 

 we thus have an instance of a plant growing in almost total 

 darkness, and as since removal the alga has continued to grow, 



