5902 



An Entomoloyist'' s 



On the 7th of September I started, with my three assistants and 

 several shipmates, for the Diggings: we left Melbourne on foot, and, 

 the roads being excessively muddy and slippery, we found that mode 

 of progression painful and laborious in the extreme. At Keilor we 

 came to a river, which we crossed in a most antediluvian-looking 

 punt, and passed the night in wet clothes on the stone floor of a hut : 

 on the 8th we crossed Keilor plains, then a regular sea of mud and 

 water, keeping in sight a most picturesque-looking mountain peak, 

 which rose many miles distant on the south-west. We passed close 

 to some remarkably deep water-courses on the right, and particularly 

 noticed a curious little conical hill, covered from its summit to its base 

 wdth honeycombed boulders, the substance somewhat resembling 

 pumice stone, but being much heavier. We reached Aiken's Gap at 

 night, after a most fatiguing walk of fifteen miles, and there at last 

 found ourselves in comfortable quarters. During this wearisome 

 journey I observed hundreds of large caterpillars at rest on the blades 

 of grass, or devouring them. A croaking or chirping sort of noise 

 was heard throughout the day : it seemed to proceed from the innu- 

 merable little pools of water which lay in our course, and we attributed 

 it to the frogs, but of the truth of this explanation we had no evi- 

 dence. 



On the 9th we set out for a coffee-house near Mount Macedon, a 

 distance of seventeen miles, most of our course laying through the 

 Black Forest, in passing through w^iich we observed thousands of gum 

 trees lying on the ground, deformed and charred by a fire which had 

 swept the whole country, in February, 1849, on a day which has since 

 been called Black Thursday : thousands of others, of all sizes and 

 ages, which had escaped the conflagration were still standing. In the 

 midst of rain, and ankle deep in water, we lost the track, and, in our 

 attempts to regain it, walked in a circle for hours, fording a small river 

 five different times. At last we reached a shepherd's hut, where I 

 left most of the party, and pushed on with an old friend to his home 

 near Mount Macedon, which we reached at length after a walk of 

 twenty-five miles. At night when I pulled off my boots the skin of 

 my heels came with them, and inflammation followed on this, which 

 made it impossible to proceed. We took up our abode in the remains 

 of a shepherd's hut, w^hich was sufficiently roofed to keep out the rain. 

 We spread Eucalyptus leaves on the ground, and, covering them with 

 blankets, made ourselves beds, and used logs of wood for pillows. 

 The fatigue we had undergone, combined with the bad water, bad 

 mutton, and other bad things we got at this place, caused dysentery, 



