92 S0ME CAUSES OF THE DECAY OF AUSTRALIAN FORESTS. 
uarter of an inch long, and very active. Two of these small 
coleopterous insects would place themselves exactly opposite each 
other on a tender shoot of new growth, and quite rapidly, with their 
small mandibles, would peel off every particle of the bark, leaving 
nothing but the woody little stem. This process took place on the 
whole of the young shoots of large trees, so that the top of the tree 
sented so many bunches, as if of small bare wires sticking up 
beetles, there was little, indeed no doubt left, that these depreda- 
tors were quite sufficient to destroy whole forests of very large 
trees. 
“Personal Observations in the central parts of Victoria,” which 
were published in the transactions of the Philosophical Society of 
the Colony just named, for the year 1855, page 72. His own 
words may be quoted, as they give a most singular suggestion by 
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d he is conducted by three of the leaders of his tribe into the 
teeth of his upper front jaw, and on returning to the camp care- 
ing a monument of the deceased. Hence we need no longer be 
