THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 95 



rapidly eaten their way right down to the very end of the roots, 

 these being about eighteen inches long. Unfortunately, we had 

 no proper appliances for digging, and it was therefore only after a 

 deal of labour that we made the discovery the laivce worked 

 so far down. We secured one specimen, but have little hopes of 

 its coming to perfection, as, the soil being of a sandy nature, the 

 lower portions of the roots are warm and moist, a condition in 

 which it would be impossible for us to keep them. The larva 

 was new to us, but it is evidently that of a longicorn. Similar 

 mounds were also at the stumps of the burned Banksias, 

 and we managed here also to get one larva, but we are sorry to 

 say that, owing to the reason above-mentioned, it has since died. 

 It is, of course, quite a common thing for beetles to breed in rotten 

 stumps and logs, and even in sound ones, but never before have 

 we noticed signs of their larvae on the surface immediately above 

 the living stumps, as above described. Sometimes a larva will 

 eat its way down the centre of a small shrub or sapling, and when 

 down to a little above the surface will work round until but a 

 very small portion of the wood is left, so that a fairly strong 

 wind will blow the upper portion over ; meanwhile the larva has 

 gone below the surface. This is a totally different proceeding to 

 the other one we have endeavoured to describe. We also got 

 several larvae in the small dead branches of Acacia diffusa, 

 but so far none of these have changed their state, and we do not 

 now think they will emerge until next summer. On a recent 

 inspection none were even showing signs of turning into pupas. 

 Several eucalypts were well out in flower, but nothing was feeding 

 on them, not even bees. 



Although we had only been a week absent, what a change had 

 come over the plants, of which so many were in flower on our 

 journey outwards. Now the flowers had nearly all disappeared, 

 almost the only one remaining being the Leptospermum, and 

 even these became scarcer and scarcer the nearer we got to 

 Stawell. 



As already mentioned, the objects of our trip were principally 

 plants and beetles, and we therefore devoted little or no attention 

 to birds, but on various occasions we saw Black Cockatoos, Galyp- 

 torliijnchus fu7iereus, mostly in pairs, but at one spot we suddenly 

 startled a flock of eight— indeed, we must have been within a 

 hundred yards of them before they sighted us, a circumstance 

 which, we think, is rather unusual with this ever-watchful bird. 



Our return stay at Stawell was very limited, not sufficiently long 

 to enable us to do any collecting, and having an invitation to pay 

 a visit to Mr. G. Skyrme, the well-known vigneron of Great 

 Western, we accepted his hospitality for a couple of days ; but 

 the locality is not a good collecting one. We certainly did not 

 neglect giving it a trial, but our labours were not very well 



