158 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



On Friday, 21st November, we took the early train, to. Heales- 

 ville, one member of our party having preceded us. The coach 

 drive from the latter place to.Marysville is well 'known, and there 

 can be few more beautiful ' roads in Victoria than that leading 

 from Fernshaw over the Black Spur. 



By the roadside between Healesville and Fernshaw, with the 

 exception of a Pultensea in flower, there is little colour in the 

 scrub, stray specimens of the Fringe Lily (Arthropodium 

 ■tuberosum), Dianella longifolia, Thelymitra longifolia, and 

 Galadenia carnea being noted. As the coach passes along we 

 see, amongst birds, the Spotted Ground Thrush by no means 

 infrequent in the scrub, the Sacred Kingfisher, the White-backed 

 Magpie, Pennant's Parrakeet, the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, the 

 Pallid Cuckoo, the Rufus-fronted Fantail, the Brown Hawk, and, 

 of course, the Laughing Jackass. The hill butterfly, Epinephile 

 abeona, is also noticed. Seven miles brings us to Fernshaw, or 

 rather the site of Fernshaw, which is now a township of the past. 

 Boyle's and Jefferson's are represented simply by the remnants of 

 a solitary brick chimney, and we only pause long enough to 

 change coaches before beginning to climb up the Black Spur. It 

 is a lovely day, and from the coach top we look beyond the deep 

 gully at our feet, filled with ferns and cotton-wood, hazel, musk, 

 dog-wood, and sassafras, away to the ranges of blue hills round 

 about and beyond Mt. Juliet. As the gully thins out near the 

 summit of the crest it becomes bordered with old and gnarled 

 beech trees (Fagus cunning hami), and the road leads through a 

 forest of large white gums, high up in the fork of one of which is 

 perched a tree fern. On the northern slope the country becomes 

 much poorer, with smaller gums and somewhat sparser scrub, until 

 the comfortable Narbethong Hotel, kept by Mrs. Miller, is 

 reached. During a short halt the moths Agarista lewenii and 

 latinus and Camptagramma correlate*, are captured, and the 

 .caterpillars of the moth Nola lugens are noticed in a half-grown 

 state, whilst those near Melbourne have already emerged. Then 

 we start again for Marysville. Beyond the Acheron — a good 

 stream of water flowing into the Goulburn Valley — the road rises 

 for some miles. Two miles this side of Marysville the lonely 

 and neglected cemetery, out in the wild bush, is passed, and then, 

 looking down from the crest of the ridge, we can see through the 

 trees the little township in the valley beneath, with the high hills 

 in the Mt. Arnold district, away in the distance. Keppel's Hotel 

 is of course our head quarters, and having an hour or two to 

 spare we wander along the track leading to the Stevenson Falls, 

 which, owing to the recent rains are in splendid condition. 

 There is little to note in the way of natural history, beyond the 

 capture of a fine but unfortunately mutilated specimen of the 

 extremely rare moth, Arhodia lutosaria. The evening is spent in 



