SOME CAUSES OF THE DECAY OF AUSTRALIAN FORESTS. 87 
opossums in the Meredith district for the sake of the skins, in 
order to make rugs. In the Woodbourne Forest he would shoot 
seventy or eighty per night in the course we three or four hours. 
soon mentioned and credited with the results. But going 
moonlight night about 10 o’clock to visit his field, he fea the 
ground. before him darkened with the multitude of opossums 
which his visit disturbed. There must have been 200 hurrying 
away before him. About a score ran up the first stump, and he 
succeeded in killing some of them. These depredators, in the 
course of a fortnight, had destroyed about 30 bushels of wheat. 
Generally, as to the numbers of opossums in the Australian 
forests, some idea may be formed from poe advertisements which 
were appearing at the time in the newspapers, for a thousand 
dozen skins ata time. So far, then, no six pushes barrier obtrudes 
itself in the way of the aboriginal explanation. Let it therefore 
be followed out still further 
opossums and the dy ying trees.—But now, coming more 
were dying, of the presence of opossums in numbers sufficient to 
account for the work of destruction done? It became a point of 
importance systematically to examine the trunk of every tree 
which appeared to be smitten with the agent which was produci 
the results under examination. The multitudinous scratches on 
the bark of the tree was proof instantaneous that hosts of opos- 
sums had found their way up the tree, whether they had or had 
not done any work of destruction on the leaves. The scratches 
the bark, sometimes for an inch or two, deepening gradually till 
they sank into the bark and afforded sufficient hold for the animal 
to rest his weight and give another spring upwards. While the 
whole surface of the bark of the tree at its lower extremity was 
thus marked with — of scratches, it is to be remembered 
that the thin outer bark on which the marks are made sdisioesand 
by peeling off every season. Hence the numbers of scratches 
observed are not a accumulations of years. That accumulation, 
however, can be seen on the hard barrels of trees which have died, 
and from which the] net has fallen. In such a case there is a net- 
work of minute oe in countless isiiinns covering square _ 
yards of surface. spaces which had been charred by — 
bush fires have become sania white, the fact — that almost 
