174 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXV. 



appear, so we started homewards along the new pipe-track, in- 

 tending to visit the Graceburn Weir, on the other side of Mt. 

 Riddell, but time scored against us, and we had to be satisfied with 

 reaching the Fernshaw road just beyond Gracedale House. The 

 new track is rather uninteresting to the naturalist, especially at 

 this time of year, except just at either end, the middle distance 

 over the western slope of Mt. Riddell being poor soil 

 timbered with Eiicalyi^tiis macrorrliyncha and E. ohliqua. In the 

 gully at the back of Gracedale the track passes through a 

 very fine brake of Melaleuca squarrosa and Leptosperrnum 

 lanigerum, with the Coral Fern, Gleichenia circinata, scrambling 

 up them to the height of ten or twelve feet. Our way was now 

 home along the Fernshaw road, with the valley of the Watts and 

 the purple slopes of Mt. Monda on our right, the tree-clad 

 hillside of Riddell, which we had just traversed, appearing across 

 the Graceburn on our left. The day, perhaps a little windy for 

 our lepidopterist, was an ideal one for botanizing, and we reached 

 the township quite satisified with our jaunt of some twelve miles. 

 For the Monday the Chum Creek district was cliosen— exactly 

 the opposite direction to our trip of the previous day. This is 

 far the best spring collecting ground near Healesville, and not 

 without interest even at this time of year. The road leaves the 

 Yarra Glen road just across the Watts, and keeps not far from 

 the creek until the bald hills and grass-tree country at the foot of 

 Mt. St. Leonard is reached, and then proceeds through the Yea 

 River gap towards Toolangi. Along the road are quantities of the 

 lycopod Selaginella uliginosa, and the fern Lindsaya linearis ; 

 the gums are principally E. Stuartiana, ohliqua, amygdalina, 

 virninalis, and eleophora, in more or less dwarf or stunted state. 

 This is to the Napoleon of eucalyptography — well, perhaps, not 

 Waterloo, but Moscow — to conquer it a toil, to find fire had been 

 before him, and to return dejected. If there is a case of 

 intercrossing of species it is here ; there seems to be a bar 

 sinister over the whole group, but it is interesting. I do 

 not infer that this crossing is the cause of the want of size — 

 that is due to the soil. The banks of the stream afforded us 

 opportunities for getting ferns, among which were some not 

 noted on the previous day, such as Woodivardii caudata and 

 the Umbrella Fern, Gleichenia Jlahellaia. At the State school a 

 halt was made for lunch. Here was noticed Grevillea alpina 

 bearing its last blooms. Leaving the rest of the party to while 

 away the time to their individual tastes — and which they did very 

 successfully, adding several beetles, notably a prettily marked 

 buprestid, Stigmodera, sp., and numbers of the Diamond Beetle, 

 Chrysolophus spectahilis, in its many varieties, to the collections — 

 your secretary and I pushed on for another couple of miles to a 

 barren spot, where, two years previously, I had found a peculiarly 



