94 NATURE NOTES 
Some Plants of Silverdale, West Lancashire. By S. Lister Petty. (Separate, 
from the Naturalist.) 
This is a most careful florula, or localised catalogue of all the recorded 
flowering plants and pteridophytes of the district. We could have wished for 
some notes of altitude and other conditions beyond the terse statement, “ The 
formation is limestone ; ” but the list is a lengthy and a critical one. 
Received: — Board of Agriculture Leaflets, Nos. 71-3, dealing with The 
Colorado Beetle, Doryphora decemlineata, with coloured figure, the Purchase of 
Artificial Manures, and Cultivation of Maize for Fodder, respectively ; The 
Victorian Naturalist, and The American Botanist for March ; The Naturalist, 
The Irish Naturalist, The Naturalists’ Journal, The Animals' Friend, Our 
Animal Friends and The Animal World for April. 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Australia. — When writing of Lake Woods, alias Sturt’s Plain, Bishop 
White says : “Sturt . . . did not suspect that it was a lake.’’ To many of 
your readers this may seem rather mysterious, but the explanation is simple. 
Australia may be roughly divided into three parts, namely, a coast-belt of 
varying width, a somewhat broken range running round the whole island, and 
the flat interior country. The coast range intercepts the greater part of the rain- 
clouds and sends the water back to the fertile outer belt, where there are con- 
sequently permanent rivers. The interior is mainly dependent upon the moisture 
which goes over the hills or through the gaps in the range. Hence the rivers of 
the interior are practically only drainage channels with no well-marksii head or 
source, and usually ending in a plain. 
After a dry season the river-bed contains only occasional pools of water, or 
may even be entirely dry throughout its length, while a wet season not only fills 
the bed of the river, but floods the plain to a greater or less extent, according 
to amount of the rainfall. Thus it comes that one explorer reports a grass- 
covered, level plain, where another finds a huge lake. 
I have crossed the Darling River after a drought and found a channel nearly 
50 feet deep and too yards wide, with a trickle of water at the bottom not 3 inches 
deep, and not many years later the water at the same place was 20 miles across 
and carried away miles of the railway embankment ! 
While living on Cooper’s Creek I often had letters from friends in England 
inquiring how we could have big floods and no rain ? The reason was that the 
rain had fallen in the ranges at the head of the Thomson and Barcoo Rivers, 
hundreds of miles away, and the water came down in real mountains, flooding 
the plains of the Cooper, which is formed by the junction of these two rivers. 
e,\, Holland Park, W. Ernest A. ElLIOTT. 
April T, 1902. 
Squirrels Playing Havoc.— Surely Mr. Daubeny, in his note (Nature 
Notes, 1902, p. 73), is rather hard on the squirrel. No doubt where they are 
very numerous these little animals may do some damage to trees, though I believe 
this is apt to be exaggerated. As to the harm they do by destroying eggs and 
young birds, I am rpiite unable to adopt the writer’s views. That instances have 
occurred of squirrels having been seen devouring both eggs and nestlings is well 
known ; but this taste for animal food is in all probability only occasionally 
indulged in. The exceptional nature of such a habit is the cause of its attracting 
.so much attention. Almost all our native rodents, with the exception of the hare 
and rabbit, at times take to an animal diet of some kind, though most of them 
are in the main vegetarians, and it is not at all likely that eggs and young birds 
are habitually sought after by squirrels. 
To “ thin the ranks of squirrels” as suggested would, I think, make no appre- 
ciable difference in the number of small birds in a district. Wherever there are 
