74 M.ACGih'LiVRAY, Ornithologists in North Queensland [^J 



Emu 

 Oct. 



arriving early. This night we noticed several fire-flies about the 

 camp ; they appeared as brilliant points of pure white light 

 moving slowly about amongst the trees. We succeeded in 

 capturing several ; they proved to be small beetles, each about 

 a quarter of an inch long, the head and thorax reddish, the elytra 

 black, with a white luminous patch on the under surface of the 

 abdomen at its termination. Next evening, at our main camp, 

 the fire-flies are all around in numbers ; they seem to congregate 

 about the tops of certain trees, flying slowly in and out and round 

 the trees, like so many brilliant, pure white stars. We captured 

 several, and they retained their light for some time after death 

 in cyanide. We kept several alive. The light seems to pulsate, 

 and any agitation seems to brighten it up. Both male and 

 female have the light, and no doubt the purpose is sexual attrac- 

 tion, and the flight round the tree-tops a nuptial flight. 



M'Lennan and I went down stream for the rest of our baggage. 

 The vegetation along the banks has improved wonderfully since 

 the rain set in. Everything is so fresh and green, and many 

 plants flowering, or on the point of doing so. There is a Smilax, 

 stronger-growing and with far better foliage than the commonly 

 cultivated " bridal creeper." Another climber, and a freely- 

 growing one, has a very pretty mimosa-like leaf, but is not 

 flowering as yet. Another has large trusses of sweetly-scented 

 yellow flowers ; another, again, is covered with white, star-like 

 flowers, after the style of a jasmine ; some are thorny and others 

 not unlike a passion-vine in growth. We went leisurely down, 

 packed up, and started back with the returning tide, exa.mining 

 nests and plants on the way, and arrived before lunch. 



Insects were getting more plentiful now that the vegetation 

 was responding to the continued falls of rain. March flies were 

 increasing in numbers, and persecuted us in an unmerciful manner, 

 so that the attentions of the mosquitoes, which were numerous 

 enough, almost passed imnoticed. My boy and Mr. Kershaw 

 were successful in capturing numbers of butterflies and moths, 

 many of which have proved to be sub-specifically new, and the 

 papering and labelling of these occupied their time in the evenings 

 at our table under the palm-leaf shelter. Every day we made 

 long marches in scrub which is either open or dense, or out in 

 open forest or grass lands. The grass had grown rapidly, and all 

 the lower lands were getting under water, and we had to. wade 

 in many flats that were quite dry when we first arrived. 



The night of the i8th January was a very wet and uncomfort- 

 able one, the heavy rain beating through the fly that sheltered 

 our bunks and wetting them. Two Kingfishers were now noted. 

 Tanysiptera sylvia was getting numerous in the scrub, and busily 

 engaged drilling its burrows in the termite nests. Syma 

 flavirostris was not so common nor so conspicuous. There were 

 many Cisticola in the grass lands, most of them building their 

 nests, wliich are not easfly found, so artfully are they .concealed. 



On the 2Qth January, in a small patch of scrub, we came across 



