THE AUSTRALIAN CYCADS 29 



interesting place it could not be surpassed. For two 

 days Mr. Gibson with his launch took us to neighboring 

 islands, especially Stradbroke Island, where the "stag- 

 horn fern" surpassed anything I had ever seen or read 

 about. Great specimens five or six feet across were not 

 uncommon (Fig. 10). In some places a score of plants 

 could be seen growing on a single tree, and often the 

 increasing weight of the growing ferns broke or over- 

 turned the trees. 



To me the most interesting species of the genus is 

 Macrozamia Moorei, which is abundant at Springsure, 

 about two hundred miles west of Rockhampton, just 

 on the Tropic of Capricorn (Fig. 11). It has a massive 

 trunk, seldom more than eight or ten feet in height, 

 but often fifteen inches or even two feet in diameter. 

 The region is extremely dry ; when I was there in Novem- 

 ber, 191 1, they said that there had not been a rain for 

 eight months. The grass was dry and brown, but the 

 cycads looked fresh and vigorous, with dark-green 

 leaves and a wonderful display of cones. The position 

 of the cones, as we shall note in a later chapter, is identi- 

 cal with that in the fossil cycads (Bennettitales) of the 

 Mesozoic age. 



Unfortunately the leaves of cycads contain a poison 

 which has a disastrous effect upon cattle, and in such a 

 dry place anything green is likely to prove attractive. 

 The cattle eat the leaves, especially the young leaves, and 

 soon show a kind of paralysis which the cattlemen call 

 "rickets." The hind legs begin to drag, giving the 

 animal a peculiar gait, and when it can no longer move 

 about it dies of starvation rather than from the direct 

 effect of the poison. The government is trying to 



