MEETINGS OF SOCIETIES. 533 
the blackman said the extensive decay of the trees was owing to the 
ravages of the opossum. On pursuing the clue thus offered, the lecturer 
obtained some very interesting corroborative evidence. In the first 
place he enquired how many opossums were in the neighbourhood, and 
he found that since the arrival of the white man and the decrease in 
the numbers of the aboriginals, the opossums had correspondingly 
increased, and they did not now form, asthey at one time did, the 
main food of the aboriginal tribes. Now he found that the small trees 
averaged about 70,000 leaves, and the big ones about 130,000, or a 
mean of 100,000 leaves toa tree. Supposing that one opossum would 
eat 50 leaves ina night, 2000 opossums were required to destroy a 
single tree in a night, which would give a destruction of 365 trees in a 
year as the work of 2000 opossums. In order to see what a ’possum 
could do, the lecturer got a tame one, and found, to his surprise, that he 
devoured 200 leaves in a single night instead of only 50, and if he was 
very hungry he would even devour the bark. The leaves of the 
common gumtree was his favourite food, although he did not appear to 
be over particular in his vegetable diet. Taking this new estimate of 
the appetite of the opossum, it followed that 18,000 of these creatures 
would destroy 1300 trees in the course of 12 months, and thus lay bare 
over a square mile of forest in a single year. Now, county Grant was 
formerly inhabited by 200 aboriginals, whose principle article of diet 
before the arrival of the white man was the oppossum. Allowing 50 
opossums as the daily portion of the tribe, that would give exactly 
18,000 opossums in the year or the number given above as equal to the 
destruction of trees covering a square mile per year. An examination 
of the manner in which the tame opossum devoured the leaves gave 
precisely similar results to those seen on the trees of the Meredith 
district. The leaves were bitten to pieces, mutilated and lacerated in 
such a manner that scarcely anything but a series of jagged notches was 
left of the once green leaf. When all the leaves on a tree were bitten 
in this manner it gave the trees a singularly spectral appearance, and 
just this appearance was presented by thousands of acres in the district 
referred to. Caterpillars, on the other hand, eat away a long gulf 
between the mid rib and the edge sf the leaf, the appearance presented 
by leaves bitten by these two leaf-eaters being entirely different. The 
traveller Glendowski observed a large number of young trees in a forest 
in the Goulburn district destroyed, and attributed it to the aboriginal 
custom of sacrificing a tree on the death of a native. On an aboriginal 
attaining puberty, two of his front teeth were knocked out and placed 
in a tree, which was thenceforth sacred, and was ringbarked whenever 
the owner of the teeth which had been placed within its recesses went 
to the happy land. Glendowski observed that the large tribe of the 
Goulburn had been massacred some time ago, and attributed the destruc- 
tion of the trees in that particular forest to the custom named; but a 
little difficulty arose here, for the very massacre of the Goulburn tribe 
prevented the warriors from having the trees sacred to them sacrificed 
to their memory. Doubless there were a variety of causes leading to 
the destruction of trees generally; although the main cause in the 
Meredith district appeared to be the opossum, among other depredators 
there was a bright copper coloured and very active species of beetle, which 
stripped the bark off the twigs of young trees, which died by thousands 
in consequence. The older trees did not suffer nearly so much as the 
