THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM MAGAZINE. 



193 



A Naturalist in the Upper Chichester 



Valley. 



By Anthony Musgrave. 



THE Upper Chichester Valley, which 

 forms the subject of my narrative, 

 lies between two spurs of the Mount 

 Royal Range, about thirty miles from 

 the township of Dungog, on the West 

 Maitland-Macksville line. Some years 

 ago a party of naturalists visited the 

 Barrington Tops, west of the Chi- 

 chester, but no collecting was done at 

 the foot of the range, and, as the area 

 has seldom been explored by natur- 

 alists, I eagerly seized the opportunity 

 to accompany my friend, Mr. J. S. P. 

 Ramsay, to the locality. 



We camped in Duggan's Gully, our 

 hut standing on a steep hillside over- 

 looking a small clearing in which rose 

 the gaunt,! forms of dead gum trees, 

 their light ' grey trunks standing out 

 against a dark background of dense 



A Grey Ironbark (Eucalyptus paniculata) was 



the Host of the " Elk's horn." 



(Platycerium bifurcatum). 



[Photo. — A. Musyrace. 



Portion of the trunk of a turpentine tree, showing 



the bark torn off by Black Cockatoos in 



their search for beetle larvae. 



[Photo. — A. Mungrave. 



scrub. Through the clearing Duggan's 

 Creek wound its way, rippling over the 

 stones on its way to the Chichester 

 River and the sea. 



It was an ideal situation for a camp, 

 for only a few minutes walking took us 

 into a dense growth of subtropical 

 vegetation. In front of the hut was an 

 abandoned cultivation paddock over- 

 grown with wild raspberry and nettle 

 bushes, whilst small gum saplings and 

 scrub trees scattered here and there 

 showed that the bush was slowly re- 

 claiming its own. On all sides clematis 



