108 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



where. During the daytime they shelter in the spouts or under 

 the eaves of a house, then at evening it is amusing to see them 

 coming out. After sitting on the edge of the roof for some 

 minutes they take a leap and land on the ground with a thump, 

 which varies in sound according to the size of the frog. On a 

 wet night, especially, they make a hideous noise. Some take up 

 prominent positions on stones, others cling to the side of the 

 house or a tank, or perchance sit on your window sill, and while 

 you are endeavouring to sleep pour forth their chorus. The frog 

 on the window sill and the one around the corner will deliver a 

 duet perhaps, the rest chiming in, their individual voices ranging 

 from a deep croak to a piping treble. At the house where I was 

 staying the youngest member of the family possessed a waddy, or 

 " frog-stick " as he called it, with which he would sally forth 

 occasionally and silence the most noisy frogs. If rain falls during 

 the daytime frogs in their hiding places immediately begin to 

 croak ; in the scrub some are heard high up in the trees. But a 

 stranger is not long in the scrubs before he is made acquainted 

 with the leeches and ticks which infest the moist leaf-covered 

 floor of the forest. These are two impedimenta of the first degree. 

 The tick has been known to cause death with domestic cats, dogs, 

 and poultry, while as a consequence of their abundance the native 

 animals and reptiles suffer. 



ON THE CRUSTACEAN, PHREATOICUS AUSTRALIS, 

 FROM TASMANIA. 

 By O. A. Sayce. 

 {Read before the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, \0th Sept., 1900.) 

 I lately received from Professor Baldwin Spencer a few Crustacea 

 collected by him from Lake Petrach, a small freshwater 

 mountain lake situated near the centre of Tasmania, and, on 

 examination of the specimens I found, in association with two new 

 species of Amphipods, a few specimens of Phreatoicus australis. 



Before comparing it with the original species from Mt. 

 Kosciusko, I should like to call the attention of my fellow- 

 members to the family to which it belongs, and to enumerate the 

 species and their distribution as at present known. 



The Phreatoicidse is a very small but important family of 

 Crustaceans, of somewhat shrimp-like form, found only in 

 Australasia, where their habitat is either in subterranean or 

 surface fresh waters, or in burrows in forest country. They 

 belong to the extensive order Isopoda, but in structural features 

 are widely separated from other existing members of that group, 

 and exhibit more than any others affinity with the order 



