142 Excursion to Frankston. P'^Dec^^'^" 



birds flew about our heads, were evidently occupied by nests. 

 The following list gives some of the more interesting birds 

 observed : — Black-faced Cuckoo-Shrike, Black Fantail Flycatcher, 

 Brush Bronze- wing Pigeon, Brown Tit, Blue Wren, Crimson 

 Parrakeet, Fan-tailed Cuckoo, New Holland Honey-eater, Spine- 

 billed Honey-eater, Rufous-breasted Thickhead, Spotted Parda- 

 lote. Orange-tipped Pardalote, White-browed Scrub-W'ren, Red 

 Wattle-bird, White-fronted Chat, White-browed Babbler, and 

 Noisy Miner. 



Insects were fairly plentiful, especially the little brown, 

 cockchafer-like beetle, Diphucephala colaspidioides, the tea-trees 

 Melaleuca and Leptospermum being covered with thousands of 

 the beetles, giving them the appearance of having been scorched. 

 —P. R. H.St. John and J. W. Audas. 



Sludge Abatement Board in Victoria. — The recently issued 

 Annual Report of the Secretary for Mines, Victoria, for 1909, makes 

 public some interesting facts in that portion containing the report of 

 the Sludge Abatement Board. The effects of the natural erosion of 

 streams, and the disposition of silt from mining operations, are very 

 graphically placed before the reader by a fine series of illustrations of 

 typical localities. Dredges have now been so improved that the damage 

 they do to the alluvial flats has been greatly minimized. Illustrations 

 are given of crops of lucerne and maize growing on old tailings dumps 

 which have been levelled and sown. That the whole of the increase 

 in size of the watercourses is not due to mining operations is shown 

 by illustrations of the Boggy Creek near Moyhu, where no dredging 

 has taken place, which twenty years ago could be stepped across ; 

 now it is a gulch 30 to 60 feet wide and 20 feet deep. (May not 

 some of this erosion be due to the removal of timber along the 

 banks, and the destruction of the forests at the heads of the streams ?) 

 Pictures taken on the Golf Hill estate, Shelford, show a difterent 

 story. Here the land has in places been covered almost to the tops 

 of the fences with battery sand washed down from Ballarat, 40 miles 

 away, on to the flats, and when dry blown about by the wind. The 

 sand averages over many acres a depth of 15 to 18 inches, and 

 naturally has quite destroyed the property from the grazier's point 

 of view. 



Botanical Works. — The Department of Agriculture, Victoria, 

 has issued a list of its publications, with prices. In order to reduce 

 the stock of some of the works by the late Baron von Mueller, they 

 have been reduced very considerably in price, and students have the 

 opportunity of filling vacancies in their libraries at a nominal cost. 



