72 Macgillivray, Ornithologists in North Queensland, [i^f "oct 



the branches of the forest trees, some in the hollows of trees. One 

 of these has a crying voice ; it rather alarms one when uttered at 

 one's elbow when passing a small tree. A lizard has a similar 

 voice, like the cry of a child, and is found also in the hollow 

 interior of small trees. One of our niggers captured a bandicoot 

 in its grass nest by putting his foot on it and then forcing its head 

 back and. breaking its neck with his hand. Flowers were coming 

 out everywhere, on shrubs, herbage, and climbers. One shrub 

 has fine, large, white, star-like flowers of great beauty. This 

 was afterwards submitted to the late Mr. Bailey, at Brisbane, 

 and proved to be a new Gardenia. 



On the 4th January we removed everything from the top 

 camp, 7 miles up the river, to the main camp, in heavy rain. 

 The river at the main camp was in high flood, and two days later, 

 when it subsided, we left for the sandalwood landing, three miles 

 down stream, on the opposite side. Here the soil is sandy, and 

 we were near the tea-tree and mangrove swamps. The open 

 forest of eucalypts, tea-tree, and several other varieties had an 

 under-brush of tea-tree and other small heathy plants. Cockerel) 's 

 Honey-eater was common here, and there was an old bower of 

 the Fawn-breasted Bower-Bird beside the camp. 



On the following day, when another boat-load of baggage was 

 being brought down from the main camp, three crocodiles were 

 disturbed from sand or mud banks. Our new camp was soon 

 fixed up, and in getting the tent poles a new bower of Chlamydera 

 cerviniventris was discovered quite near by. Round about this 

 camp were several burrows with a heap of sand at the entrance ; 

 they wei^e about two inches in diameter at the entrance, and went 

 down about two feet. At the bottom was a chamber full of leaves, 

 and a female elephant beetle cheeped vigorously on being dis- 

 turbed. In one of the nests were three eggs of the beetle ; all had 

 the nests of leaves in the chamber and a female beetle in 

 possession. 



On the 8th we all went down the southern bank of the river, 

 following the lightly-timbered bank for some distance, then into 

 dense scrub, emerging from it into tall-growing mangroves, in 

 which there was very little bird-life, then into swamp with thickly- 

 growing fan-palms. We occasionally halted and lit a smouldering 

 fire of leaves to make a smoke, in which we stood to give ourselves 

 a rest from the mosquitoes. We turned back soon after, and 

 struggled through thickly-interlaced scrub which opened out into a 

 tea-tree swamp — shallows with large and small paper-barks, 

 bordered with a thickly-growing Lomaria-like fern, coarse grass, 

 and Pandanus. We followed this up till near the camp, where we 

 got our cameras and went back to the swamp for views. 



The following day we went up the river in the boat, and soon 

 noted where a large crocodile had slid off a sand-bank. There 

 were many beautiful climbers festooning the trees along the 

 banks ; one especially, with lavender flowers in large trusses, made 

 a great display. Another, with Tecoma-hke foliage, had orange 



