THK VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 97 



US to his farm, some distance away. The road leads through the 

 little township of Emerald, and thence for several miles through 

 quite primitive country, being densely timbered on either side. 

 The farmhouse is prettily situated on the side of a rather steep 

 hill, at the bottom of which flows a lovely stream, one of the 

 upper branches of the Cockatoo Creek. Within ten minutes we 

 found ourselves in the primeval forest, where a beautiful spring 

 of icy-cold water was bubbling up in the bed of a deep valley. 

 It first filled a crystal well, and then went sparkling away merrily 

 towards the main stream. The well was fringed with many kinds 

 of ferns ; amongst them we noticed the Maidenhair, Adiantum 

 cethiopicutn, the delicate fronds of the Batswing or Oak Fern, Pteris 

 incisa, several kinds of Lomaria, the Shield Fern, Aspidium 

 aculeatum, &c. Even old fallen trees had their half-decayed 

 trunks made beautiful with patches of green mosses interspersed 

 with grey and brown masses of lichens ; amongst these were the 

 fronds of Polypodium austrcde and of the creeping fan-shaped 

 Spleenwort, Asple7iium flabellifolium, generally found on rocks 

 and stones. 



The spring has never been known to fail, and during wet 

 weather it must flow much stronger, for the bed of the stream was 

 quite wide in places and covered with waterworn stones. 

 Following its track we had to scramble our way beneath a mass 

 of dense scrub completely arching overhead. The scrub was 

 principally composed of Hazel, Pomaderris apetala, Musk, Aster 

 argoph//llus, the Mint Tree, Prostanthera lasiantha, the Blanket 

 Tree, Senecio bedfordii, and the Valley Fern Tree, Dicksonia 

 antarctica. When we arrived at the main stream we found 

 it bordered with huge tufts of Lomaria capensis, L. discolor, and 

 L. lanceolata. Amongst the very few plants in flower was Bauera 

 rubioides, but its flowers were quite white, in consequence of the 

 deep shade. The banks of the stream, which rose up so abruptly 

 in some places that we could not climb them, were covered with 

 a dense growth of Prostanthera lasiantha, which should present 

 a splendid sight when in flower. 



Under these trees was the home of many mosses, lichens, and 

 fungi, the latter especially being in great profusion. Amongst 

 those belonging to the family bearing a gill-like hymcnium — the 

 Argaricini — was a very uncommon species, Craterellus multiplex. 

 This curious fungus bears several pilei, one over the other, 

 putting one in mind of a dumb waiter. Professor Cooke only 

 notices this fungus from Tasmania, but Mr. M'Alpine includes it 

 amongst Victorian fungi. I found it some twenty years ago in a 

 Gippsland mountain gully, but had not seen it since. Anotiier 

 Agaric, very noticeable on account of its colours, had a purple 

 pileus, red stem, and bright jellow gills, but was of such 

 delicate structure that it was destroyed before a drawing of it 

 could be made. The tiny Agaricus granulosus was very plentiful, 



