Australian Natural History. * 1479 



climb the low rocky border, and being unable to right themselves, 

 there miserably perished. These are all of the green species, which 

 resorts to this and the other sand-banks and islets on the N.E. coast of 

 New Holland, in considerable numbers, to deposit its eggs. The night 

 time is chosen for this purpose, and the female digs a large hole or 

 pit behind the beach, in which she lays as many as fifty or more eggs, 

 carefully covering them over with sand. These eggs are an inch and 

 a half in diameter, orbicular, white, and invested with a thin skin, like 

 parchment. In due time, the young are hatched, and instinctively 

 make for the sea, not however without encountering many enemies, as 

 they are preyed upon by various kinds of sea-fowl, from the frigate- 

 bird down to the sooty tern, for I have taken a young turtle from the 

 stomach of a tern which had swallowed it entire. One night I was 

 much surprised to witness the eruption of a party of newly-hatched 

 turtles from the sand under the blanket on which I lay ; in less than' 

 half an hour about a dozen made their appearance, and it was amus- 

 ing to observe how each instinctively scrambled off in the direction of 

 the sea, from which course I found it impossible, after many trials, to 

 make them deviate. During the months of June, July and August, 

 the turtle occurred at irregular intervals, generally singly, but in the 

 beginning of September they became more numerous. 



Fish were found on the reef in great abundance ; shoals of a large 

 Fistularia and a fine Prionurus, w T ith occasionally a few Mullet, were 

 in the habit of coming in with the flood tide, and at low water any 

 number of " eels" — a snake-like fish of the family Muraenidae, might 

 be procured. One of these last, usually about three feet in length, of 

 a pale greenish white colour, closely studded with minute greenish 

 brown spots arranged in small clusters, we found to be capital eating, 

 and for this purpose killed great numbers with a bayonet fixed on the 

 end of a stick. It frequents the small pools left by the tide, getting 

 under stones and insinuating itself into holes and crevices when pur- 

 sued, and bites fiercely at anything presented to it — as a stick, or 

 the finger. 



The Entomological field is very limited in extent, there being pro- 

 bably not more than thirty species of insects, but some of them are 

 sufficiently interesting to merit especial mention. A large scarabi- 

 deous beetle, found occasionally under the surface by digging, was 

 considered by that eminent entomologist, Mr. W. S. MacLeay, to be 

 undescribed. The quantity of dead bodies of birds and turtle affords 

 the means of sustenance to several necrophagous Coleoptera, among 

 others a small brilliant Hister, a Necrobia, like N. ruficollis, and that 



