WILD LIFE IN TASMANIA. 
125 
basin containing about a dozen good specimens, as well as three 
eggs of the marsh harrier and two of the heron. My father was 
glad to buy as many as he wanted of the spoonbill’s, and we 
probably have the last laid at the Horster Meer, for it was 
expected that the next year it would be deserted. 
The eggs we have are about the average size of a common 
hen’s egg, but rougher in texture and not really white, mottled 
with rust colour and grey, especially at the larger end, but they 
are said to vary considerably both in form and colour. The 
flight of the spoonbill is very steady, and the legs and bill, both 
apparently black, stretched out perfectly straight before and 
behind present, with their brilliantly white plumage, a very 
striking appearance. 
In the fourth edition of “Yarrell” (vol. iv.), Mr. Howard 
Saunders tells us that the spoonbills of the Horster Meer re- 
moved thence to the Naarden Meer, a tract of about 2,300 
acres in extent, some fifteen miles from Amsterdam, where they 
were visited in 1884 by Mr. Alfred Crowley, but as the drainage 
of part of that meer had already been begun, the birds may have 
since quitted that neighbourhood. Mr. Harting has told us in 
the Zoologist for 1877 that, in a MS. survey of certain Sussex 
manors taken in 1570, mention is made of spoonbills, under the 
name of “shovelers,” breeding in the woods called the Westwood 
and Haselette, near Goodwood Park, in that and former years ; 
and in a subsequent communication [ZooL, 1884, p. 81) he adduced 
some interesting evidence of the previously unsuspected fact that 
in Henry the Eighth’s time spoonbills nested in the heronry 
in the Bishop of London’s park at Fulham. 
M. Borrer. 
WILD LIFE IN TASMANIA. 
IV. 
NE of the first things to strike our notice on peering 
into the groves of small gums which adorn parts of 
our bush road, is the immensity of insect life supported 
by one small sapling. Each of them is a mine of 
wealth to the inquisitive entomologist, a source of never-ending 
delight, a study for a life-time. The stem, the branches, the 
twigs, the bark, the leaves, the tender shoots — all contribute 
their quota to the teeming population of these miniature but 
favoured eucalypti. Perhaps the feature which impresses us 
most strongly during our examination is the effect produced by 
the attacks of gall-flies upon the leaves and twigs of our ever- 
green beauties. Scarcely a leaf but shows the mark, large or 
small, of these alert and industrious insects ; hardly a twig but 
is disfigured by knobs and bumps indicative of their attacks. 
