154 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



"sugar bag," low down on the same tree. These bees are very 

 small and dark in colour and do not sting, and the hives have 

 usually about a quart of honey in them. Several nests of, the 

 Laughing Jackass (D. gigas), were seen, these nests being 

 generally made by scooping out a hole in the White Ants' nests, 

 on the trees. The ants' nests seem also to be the favourite nest- 

 ing place of the Sacred and M'Leay's Kingfishers, which make 

 a small liole through the often hard exterior and a larger 

 chamber inside, which is easily hollowed out, but the Leach's 

 Kingfisher, which is found nearer the coast, builds in the 

 hollows of trees. The great enemy of birds here is the Iguana, 

 or Lace Lizard; on one occasion Mr. C. Bai-nard found one 

 eating the eggs in the nest of a Black Duck which had built 

 in a hollow in a gum tree. On another occasion we walked 

 over to a big belt of scrub about two miles away, and came 

 upon several old mounds of the Talegalla, but the weather 

 had been too dry for them to start making up the nests for this 

 season, as they require Tain to make the leaves, &c., damp for 

 generating the heat necessary for the incubation of their eggs. We 

 also saw a few of the birds themselves, which when disturbed flew 

 into the lower branches of a tree and gradually worked their way 

 to the lop, from whence they flew. Their mounds are about 3 

 feet high by 7 feet in diameter and the temperature, as I afterwards 

 found, was 95°. The number of eggs seems never to be more than 

 thirty, and oftentimes less, and three birds apparently lay in one 

 nest. Several good specimens of the curious Bottle Tree 

 (Sterculia rupestris) were seen here ; their bark is hard, but the 

 wood inside is very soft and moist, so much so that in times of 

 drought the trees are cut down and stripped of their bark, 

 when they are carted to the homestead and cut up into small 

 pieces for the cattle to eat, which they do greedily. Others 

 are cut down, stripped of their bark and then left for the 

 cattle that are in the neighbourhood, and the famished stock leave 

 very little, even eating down into the roots as far as possible. 

 There are two varieties of this tree, the broad-leaved and the 

 narrow-leaved. On coming out of the scrub on our return a large 

 Guckoo {Euditinamis Jlindersi) dashed past, with a Lealherhead 

 in full chase ; it had evidently been in too close proximity to the 

 Leatherhead's nest, a proceeding naturally resented by the right- 

 ful owner. The cuckoo seems apparently to be very cowardly, 

 as it is generally chased away by a bird much smaller than itself. 

 Several varieties of lizards were found near here. Amongst them 

 being the Lace Lizard i^Hydrosaums varius), Gould's Monitor, 

 the curious lizard Nephrarus asper, the Frilled Lizard {Ghlamydo- 

 saurus Jcingii), the Bearded Lizard, with several Geckos and 

 Hinulia Lizards, the latter being very active and hard to catch 

 without breaking their tails. 



