66 
The Queensland Naturalist. March, 1935. 
times find owls eating kookaburras, which must be killed 
when sleepy at night time. Trillers and peaceful and 
bar-shouldered doves are mating now ; jabirus have been 
seen on cotton patches near Theodore canals, and one day 
recently a fine large one visited our billabong close to 
the garden. Babblers are bringing out young ones; pale- 
headed parrots are here in numbers, and many red-winged 
ones. On a station, where there are few watering places, 
about 18 miles or so from the river, I am told that there 
are hundreds of rainbow lorikeets as well, which make a 
gorgeous display when they come to water at the trough- 
ing near the big tanks about sunset. 
Towards the end of September, visiting Rockhampton. 
I paused to admire a tall spreading Schotia tree which 
throws a cool grateful shade near the Girls ’ Central State 
School, on the William Street side. There are two of these 
trees near the school; they possess pinnate leaves consist- 
ing of five pairs of lanecolate leaflets. The young leaves 
are of a beautiful tender green, the older ones of a darker 
shade, and the red flower-clusters are extremely handsome. 
The flowers have deep blood-red petals and ten tall 
stamens, all springing from a united cup-like base, and in 
the centre the pistil. Before they open, the flowers look 
like red pods. In the branches, feeding on honey from 
these showy- fragrant blossoms were hundreds of rainbow 
lorikeets (Blue Mountain parrots) as tame, noisy and fear- 
less as possible, and considerable numbers of red-winged 
parrots (crimson-winged lories), and green leeks (green, 
with yellow and a little red). Here was an excellent field 
for nature study in the heart, of a city. There are many 
Schotia trees growing in the streets of this well-laid out- 
town of the Fitzroy River, and everyone I saw of any size 
was full of feasting parrots. 
THE PRODUCTION OF PROTEIN FROM 
INORGANIC MATERIAL. 
Mr. W. D. Francis, Assistant Government Botanist, 
Brisbane, assiduously continues his researches on the above 
important subject. His latest contribution is “The Mech- 
anism of the Production of Protein from Inorganic Mat- 
erial by Iron: The Relationship of the Iron Bacterium 
Leptothrix to Nuclear Chromosomes, ’ ’ and consists of 16 
pages of printed matter and two plates. It is published 
privately by the author. Attention is drawn to the sim- 
ilarity in the shape and structure of the chromosomes in 
a fern and one of the higher flowering plants, obviously 
two plants very widely separated from each other in the 
sc^le of vegetation. This prompts the statements that 
