April, 1910.] THE VICTOKIAN NATURALIST. 187 



along the roadway. The mountain side has been selected 

 and denuded of timber. This belt is about two miles 

 wide. Above it the forest area has also been cleared, partly 

 by legitimate cutting and partly by bush fires. Many years 

 ago the wastefulness of the timber-getter was, in the midst 

 of plenty, and under an old system, hardly observable, but from 

 the standpoint of the system of the last few years, and with timber 

 fast disappearing, the thousands of whitened trunks which lie 

 where they fell, or slid to when cut, caused us to indulge in much 

 useless regret. To-day active watchful foresters traverse the timber 

 lands to check illicit cutting and grazing, and, among much else, 

 even examine the refuse heaps at the mills to see that every 

 available foot of the logs is made use of, hence waste is now 

 almost reduced to its minimum. When climbing about these 

 mountain sides, forcing one's way through almost impenetrable 

 scrub and over huge tree trunks, one realizes far better than from 

 the comfort of an easy chair the area to be covered, the difficulties 

 of travel — often by saddle impracticable — and the comparative 

 fewness of the officers for the purpose. 



During our climb through the higher portion of the forest we 

 'could not help but remarking the extraordinary length of the 

 strips of bark hanging from the trees. One tall tree had a 

 remarkable appearance. The bark had stripped from the base 

 upwards in a number of thin straps about j5.^-inch thick and a few 

 inches wide. One of these straps had been tossed by the wind 

 until the free end had reached an adjacent tall tree, round which 

 it tangled, and thus formed a giant festoon ; another had frayed 

 itself into a tine fringe, and several rested with their free ends on 

 the ground. By taking in hand the end of one of these and 

 walking away from the base of the tree we were able to estimate, 

 by means of the angle formed and the measured base, that the 

 bark had increased its original length by about lo per cent. ! 

 the result of tensile strain of gravity and wind pressure. The 

 length of the strip was about loo feet. 



The upper parts of the tributaries of the Dee run through 

 a fine beech forest, some of the old trees, with bifurcated trunks, 

 having a circumference at the base of over 30 feet. Two kinds 

 of fungus were plentiful on the old bark, one a Polyporus, a dark 

 brown, hard, horizontally laminated " bracket " fungus, and the 

 other, of which we brought away a fine specimen, has been 

 kindly identified by Mr. D. McAlpine, Government Vegetable 

 Pathologist, as Daldina co7icentrica (BaXi.), Cess, and De Nat. 

 Some interest attaches to this specimen, which, Mr. McAlpine 

 states, is the largest he has seen or read of. It was of hard, 

 smooth surface when collected, but in a few days was covered 

 with a sooty-black powder, and this, composed of spores ejected 

 from the asci, had sprinkled the sub-stratum on which the fungus 



