^"S"] Lucas, Among the Seaweeds at Portsea. 6i 



bridge Wilson did not include it in his *' List of Algae from Port 

 Phillip Heads and Western Port." I suppose it was too near 

 land to engage his sympathy. \Miat the browns were I 

 cannot say, but at Portsea pier we had little green but a great 

 deal of the long trails of Macrocystis pyrifera (Turn.), Ag., which 

 there reaches to a dozen feet in length. We circumnavigated to 

 Sorrento, and after many mysterious and hieroglyphical curves 

 we were placed alongside the pier, at the base of which we 

 were crowded (Sargassa and all) into a 'bus which rolled us 

 into Portsea. At the big boarding-house I was provided with 

 a corner of the verandah curtained off, and here and hence for 

 a wTek I conducted my phycological investigations. My 

 fellow-boarders seemed to take a kindly interest in my pro- 

 ceedings. Some of the boys were eager to present me with 

 specimens, and in this way I obtained a very fine example of 

 Caulerpa Sonderi, F. v. M. One little lady assisted me to 

 mount the weeds, and was very proud to float out some by 

 herself and for herself. 



The first thing was to learn the topography and the second 

 to find the times of the tides. I first made for the Back Beach 

 — i.e., the one which fronts the ocean. The whole of the 

 peninsula between the Sorrento-Portsea road and the Back 

 Beach is covered with tea-tree scrub of the most uncom- 

 promising character. The width is only about a mile and a 

 half, but it would be good going t'o make your way across the 

 scrub, using the tomahawk freely, in a day. Fortunately, a 

 good narrow road has been made, so that one can reach the 

 Back Beach in half an hour's walk. Where the road has been 

 cut in the sand the sides are held up by tea-tree. I saw very 

 few plants in flower as I passed, but at the point where the 

 road ended on the top of the slope to the sea the bushy 

 Composite, Calocephalus Brownii, F. v. M., was full of heads 

 of blossom. A curved track, ending in a broken ladder, led 

 down to the shore, but it was easy enough to go down any- 

 where, and later on I saw the advantage of the ladder, for 

 some visitors were using parts of it to light a fire for their 

 " billy." 



Just in front of the foot of the descent the sands w^ere in 

 contact with a flat reef stretching out for 50 to 100 yards, 

 ending in very ugly-looking rocks over which the seas were 

 breaking, and hollowed out irregularly in shallow and deeper 

 rock-pools. To the east a long sand stretch without reefs, 

 but to the west the reefs grew higher and more numerous, and 

 were interrupted by ridges of the land running out in miniature 

 promontories. The first of these ridges has been hollowed out 

 in a tunnel by the waves, and is accordingly termed '' London 

 Bridge." The next is similarly perforated, but I heard no 



