188 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXVl- 



rested to a radial distance of two inches beyond the margin of the 

 plant, which was about two and a half inches in diameter. On 

 the exposed root of an old beech, some six inches or so above 

 ground, the fractured and empty shell of the black land-snail, 

 Helix atramentaria, was found, and near it a Lyre-bird's feather. 

 The association was suggestive of a tragedy in low life. Can any 

 member tell us whether the Lyre-bird has been known to eat 

 these snails after fracturing the shell, as the Thrush does the 

 garden snail ? We had not been following the most direct track 

 to the summit, and after leaving the beech forest and its included 

 fern gullies, found ourselves in scrubby country, near the top of 

 the range, which was very difficult to traverse, owing to much of 

 the scrub having been beaten down into a veritable tangle by the 

 winter snow. At length this was passed, and a depression, one 

 of the heads of the Don, draining the other slope of the range, 

 crossed, but only to get into another almost impassable area, 

 covered with shrubby asters and cassinas, which, as we fought 

 our way through, rid themselves of the minute hairlets with which 

 they are clothed, and these latter, getting into our throats and 

 nostrils, set up a most terrible irritation, which was anything but 

 pleasant while it lasted. Eventually we struck a paling-getters' 

 track, from which " The Rock " is easily accessible through a 

 small forest of young blackbutts. This we found to be an exposed 

 boss of dacite, several acres in extent, with a precipitous face 

 turned to the south-east, but less steeply descending towards the 

 north-west. The surface is traversed by small and large fissures, 

 which strike south east, and others obliquely to the north. The 

 fissures occasioned by mechanical stress and change of tempera- 

 ture have become widened and hollowed out in places in 

 the process of weathering ; rain, frost, and the chemical action of 

 decomposing vegetable matter and living plants, such as lichens, 

 have paved the way for a growth of pseudo-petrophytes, stunted 

 gums, acacias, calistemon, &c., having secured a good root hold. 

 The rock weathers also by throwing off thin concentric flakes. 

 The summit was not without flowering plants of an herbaceous 

 nature, while in the crevices of the stones grew the little Rat- 

 tailed Fern, A splenium flab elli folium, the highest plant of all being 

 Geranium pilosum, but the introduced Flat Weed, Hypocharis 

 radicata, grew close by. The surrounding eucalypts are E. pillu- 

 laris, Blackbutt, E. goniocalyx, Victorian Spotted Gum, which 

 succeeds the Messmate, E. obliqua, and Manna Gum, E. 

 viminalis, &c., of lower altitude. 



From "The Rock," in suitable weather, a magnificent view can 

 be obtained, and for this alone the climb is justified. The day was 

 too hazy to make out through our field-glasses any of the promi- 

 nent land-marks of Melbourne, forty miles away, but the pine 

 trees on the hill at Ringwood were distinctly visible, while Mounts 



