34 THE LIVING CYCADS 



west of Cairns. So I alighted at Cairns and started for 

 the forest. With three AustraHan bushmen — the first 

 I had seen — armed with axes and carrying boomerangs, 

 I managed to move around some in the midst of tall 

 trees, almost impenetrable undergrowth, and spiny 

 hanging vines which they call ''lawyer vines" on account 

 of the exasperating tangles. In places roads had been 

 cut by lumbermen, and along these one could get photo- 

 graphs and a wider view of the surroundings. 



The immense Lyco podium Phlegmaria, the ''tassel 

 fern," with tassel-like clusters of cones, and Ophioglossum 

 pendulum, the "ribbon fern," were the most interesting 

 features of the epiphytic vegetation of the tree tops. If 

 a tree with such specimens was a foot or less in diameter 

 the bushmen were likely to cut it down; if larger they 

 would climb; but when they found that fine, uninjured 

 specimens were worth three pence or even six pence, a 

 climb of eighty feet was not at all objectionable. As 

 I was leaving, they showed their appreciation of the 

 tips by presenting me with a varied assortment of 

 boomerangs. 



The big ferns were all that had been claimed. The 

 tree ferns belonged to the genus Alsophila, familiar in 

 all large conservatories. The "larger ferns without 

 trunks" proved to be Angiopteris and Marattia, the 

 most primitive of living ferns. Their gigantic leaves, 

 with a midrib as large as a man's arm, reached a length 

 of seventeen feet. 



While collecting material of these ferns I accidentally 

 came upon a specimen of Bowenia, and when the bush- 

 men, who spoke no English, noticed that I was much 

 pleased with it, they took me to a place where there were 



