202 | A. G. HAMILTON. 
a tract of land traversed by a bushfire (judging by its flora, it 
must have been on the Hawkesbury Sandstone formation, as the 
the plants are very characteristic of that soil) where the majority 
of plants covering the ground before the fire did not reappear, their 
places being taken by allied species and many distinct ones. He 
gives a list of one hundred and twenty one species collected on 
the burnt space, and on examination of the list, I find that seventy 
nine are either herbaceous or small shrubs, fourteen being terres- 
trial orchids, which bears out what I said above as to annual and 
herbaceous plants being advantaged, 
Mr. A. W. Howitt, F.G.s., in a paper on the Eucalypts of 
Gippsland,* remarks that the annual bushfires tended to keep the 
forest open, and prevented open country from being overgrown ; 
that they also acted as a check to insect life destroying among 
others those that prey on Kucalypts, and that therefore any cause 
lessening the number and force of bushfires alters the balance 
materially and thus produces new and unexpected results. He 
points out that parts of the Snowy River valley once open and free 
from forests, at present show whole tracts of country covered with 
sapling forests of Eucalyptus hemiphloia, EB. pauciflora, E. vim-— 
inalis, EL. amygdalina, and £. stellulata, and he also mentions 
other localities where the same has taken place. 
As Mr. Howitt points out, bushfires have an indirect effect on 
vegetation, since they destroy multitudes of insects, some of which 
may have been fitted to fertilise certain flowers. In this way 
plants at a distance might be put at a disadvantage through a 
fire ; or insects preying on plants being destroyed, the plants con- 
cerned would be benefited. Again, insectivorous animals of small 
size are overtaken and burnt, and here again a mesh of the net- 
work between the animal and vegetable kingdoms would be affected 
for both injurious and beneficial insects would be less liable to 
destruction by their natural enemies and many plants would in 
consequence suffer or benefit. But in the present state of know- 
* Trans. Roy. Soc. of Victoria, Vol. 11., p. 81. 
