THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 153 



they surpass in height and girth the Blackwoods, Acacia 

 melanoxylon, which at a distance they resemble, especially when 

 the Blackwoods are flowering and the Beeches are resplendent 

 with the golden-coloured young leaves at the tips of their 

 otherwise dark-green branches. Many were seen from 125 to 

 150 feet high, with a stem diameter of three to four feet, though 

 an exceptionally fine tree will reach 200 feet, with a girth of 

 twelve to fifteen feet. 



It is somewhat remarkable that the Sassafras, Atherosperma 

 moschatum, appears to be entirely missing from the Otway 

 Forest, and with it the Lyre-bird, Menura superba, and the little 

 crustacean Talitrus sylvaticus, its principal food, as also the 

 Wombat and the Echidna, or Porcupine. These associated 

 absences are striking, and bear out a bushman's statement that 

 one never finds the Lyre-bird where there is no Sassafras and 

 "Lyre-bird's Shrimp." 



By way of compensation, however, we have the rare tree fern, 

 Cyathea medidlaris, which grows in limited quantities in the 

 deep guUies, interspersed with the common Valley Tree Fern, 

 Dicksonia biUardieri, but never ventures up the slopes like 

 the Hill Tree Fern, Alsophila australis. In the upper 

 Elliott Valley the Dicksonias acquire great dimensions of 

 stem, some measured with a tape at 3 feet from the ground 

 yielding diameters of 3, 3 feet 6 inches, and 4 feet respectively. 

 On their trunks grew the finest of filmy ferns, specimens of 

 Hymenophyllum nitens and H. javanicicm, taken at random and 

 exhibited to-night, measuring 15 and 11 inches in length respec- 

 tively. These two ferns, with the fan-leaved hepatic 

 Symphogyna Jlabellata, and other filmy mosses, often completely 

 covered many of the large tree fern trunks with a beautiful green 

 coat. 



The damp recesses of the Otway Forest are ideal homes for 

 ferns, and several other species besides the filmy ferns were 

 found growing on the trunks of the tree ferns. Of course the 

 climbing polypody, Polypodiutn pustulatum, sometimes called the 

 Victorian Stag-horn, was abundant, while the smaller Polypodium 

 au8ti-ale, Aspidium capense, the bulb-bearing spleenwort, 

 Aaplenium bulbijerum,. and the rarer Willow Fern, A. Jiaccidum, 

 helped to vary the drapery of the large tree fern trunks. 



Some of the ferns cover considerable areas in which one species 

 predominates ; thus Lomaria capense, van procera, covered acres, 

 and the fertile frond five and a half feet long and twelve inches 

 wide exhibited to-night will give some idea of the growth of 

 this species in a favourable locality. Close by the Cyatheas, and 

 in the shadiest part of the forest, was found the rare fern Aspidium 

 hispidum, yielding fronds thirty inches long by eleven wide — 

 an unusual size for this species. The Lomarias, L. fiuviatilis 



