of water-worn pebble stone, and must have been carried for a 

 considerable distance to the camping ground for the manufac- 

 ture of the cutting instruments of stone. 



Mr. R. M. Johnston said the specimen Dr. Noetling had 

 exhibited to them that evening was one of the most interesting 

 that had been found in Tasmania. Eleven of the chips fitted 

 beautifully on the core. Often pieces of rock chipped off from 

 great changes of temperature, such as during bush fires, but 

 he believed that these pieces were chipped off the core before 

 them by aboriginals. 



Mr. A. J. Taylor said 'he did not think the fragments were 

 flaked off by fire, for fire would only cause fractures from the 

 ouside, and this core had some fractures from the inside. 



The Chairman said that fire would have broken off the flakes 

 more from the outside. A rich field for Dr. Noetling's investi- 

 gations would be found near the head of the Macquarie River, 

 where the aborigines had a favourite camping ground near the 

 outcrop of a cherty rock, which formed the material of most 

 of their implements. He called attention to some flint and 

 obsidian arrow heads which he had collected in Texas, U.S.A., 

 some years ago, as illustrating a different phase of civilisation. 



NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 



Mr. R. M. Johnston exhibited a small specimen of a moun- 

 tain trout (Galaxias truttaceus), captured by Mr. Tute at 

 the Great Lake, which had an abnormal development in the 

 shape of two mouths, being a sport or freak of nature; from 

 the mouth, below the chin of the creature, the tongue pro- 

 truded. A similar curiosity had been noticed by him some 

 years ago in a sea perch. 



Mr. A. J. Taylor made some remarks on the so-called bul- 

 rush caterpillar (Sphaeria robertsia). He said the cater- 

 pillar IS mteresting because of the peculiar way in which it 

 becomes the host of a vegetable form of life, which uses up 

 the animal structure of the caterpillar for its own nourishment, 

 while at the same time it replaces every portion so robbed 

 with vegetable tissue to an equal extent. In this way the 

 caterpillar is by degrees converted entirely into a vegetable 

 root, exactly resembling, in every respect, the original form of 

 the insect from which it had derived sustenance during its 

 period of growth. The process of vegetation is this: Whilst 

 burrowing in the light vegetable soil, previous to undergoing 

 the process of its natural metamorphosis, the caterpillar gets 

 some of the seeds of the fungus under the scales about its neck; 

 and from this part of its body a seed vegetates, and grows into 

 a single stalk, from six to ten inches high, the top portion of 

 the stalk in the female plant, when fruiting, representing, only 

 m a much smaller degree, the club-headed bulrush with which 

 we are all so lamiliar. The body of the caterpillar is, as already 

 described, gradually metamorphosed into the vegetable root of 

 the plant. The seed vessel is the only portion of this curious 

 plant found above ground, therefore it may be easily overlooked. 

 When freshly dug up the root is soft, and, in spite of its woody 



