2 26 Hart, Some Coastal Plants. [vo'i^'xxx 



m large quantity. Some parts of the scrub should be entirely 

 of fire-resisting plants. Even narrow tracks could be made 

 useful as fire-breaks by belts of suitable vegetation alongside 

 them, and a practice might well be made of separating 

 adjacent allotments by non-inflammable hedges. There is no 

 need to stint the hedge, either in width or height, if it will not 

 burn. The protection of a good hedge facihtates a httle garden, 

 which in its turn may add to the security from fire. Careful 

 preservation and planting of suitable native plants could then 

 produce a coastal scrub more diversified, more pleasing in 

 aspect, and safer, and at the same time equally effective for 

 shelter and protection, and as typically coastal and Australian 

 as the present scrub, with its strongly predominant tea- tree. 



THE INCUBATION OF THE MUTTON-BIRD EGG. 



By Joseph Gabriel. 



(Read before the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, gth March, 191 4.) 



During the Club excursion to the Furneaux Group of islands, 

 in Bass Strait, in November, 1893 {Vict. Nat., vol. x., p. 167, 

 Feb., 1894), those interesting people, the so-called half-castes, 

 suppHed us with some very interesting notes regarding the 

 habits of the Short-tailed Petrels or Mutton-birds, Puffinus 

 brevicaudus, Gld., and one of them stated at the time that 

 the incubation of the egg took eight weeks. As he made this 

 statement so confidently I accepted it as correct until a few 

 years ago, when I determined to test the subject myself. 



In December, 191 1, Mr. Dixon, who resides in the immediate 

 vicinity of " Murray's Rookery," on PhilHp Island, kindly 

 consented to watch the birds for me. The rookery having 

 been depleted of its eggs up to 30th November (last day of 

 egging), and as I was there on 3rd December, when there was 

 a bird in nearly every hole, I thought this was a fair chance 

 to get a good result ; but my friend's memory failed him, and 

 when he visited the holes he had to calculate the chicks were 

 about a week old, and that the hatching took about a month. 

 As this was not satisfactory, in December, 1912, a friend of 

 mine at Rhyll obligingly placed three eggs in an incubator, 

 with the result that one chick came out in forty -six days ; the 

 other two eggs were damaged a few days before, but had dead 

 chicks. 



As I was still hungering for better results, on 30th Novem- 

 ber of last year my incubator friend, Mr. M'Veen, at my 

 request, kindly placed eight eggs under a domestic hen. In 

 due time I received the following note from him : — " Only one 

 out of the Mutton-bird eggs came out ; the bird was hatched 

 on forenoon of 15th January. It was a strong, fully- 



