50 
E. R. Saunders. 
THE AUSTRALIAN MEETING OF THE 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
I.—The Botanical Excursions. 
By E. R. Saunders. 
T HE difficulty which confronted'botanists attending the meeting 
of the British Association in Australia was that of selecting 
from among the large number of interesting expeditions which had 
been organised for their benefit. In each of the five capitals the 
programme included several day or week-end exclu sions, in some 
cases covering a considerable mileage, which only the most generous 
provision of motor cars rendered it possible to carry out. 
WESTERN AUSTRALIA: 
Perth and the Neighbourhood. The Margaret River. 
Albany. 
For those who were able to arrive in Western Australia by the 
middle of July there was opportunity to explore the country around 
Perth before the official opening of the Meeting. Expeditions to 
Mundaring Weir and to various points on the slopes of the Darling 
range gave one an introduction to a characteristic landscape of 
evergreen forest vegetation with Eucalyptus as the dominant 
element, while the longer excursion to Yallingup and the Margaret 
River caves, involving a drive of some 70 miles through the bush, 
gave a splendid opportunity of seeing a larger extent of this type 
of forest vegetation. The Eucalyptus forest makes a very distinct 
impression on the mind of one seeing it for the first time; the 
height of the trees, the grey-white colour of the stems of many 
species, and the general absence of branches of any size for a 
considerable height from the ground, for 100 feet perhaps, are very 
striking. Several species are common in the Perth neighbourhood, 
e.g., the Jarrah (E. marginata) world-famed for its valuable timber, 1 
the Red Gum ( E. calophylla), the Tuart (E. gomphocephala) and 
the White Gum ( E . redunca), while in the extreme south-west is to 
be met the Karri ( E . diversicolor), one of the giant trees of Australia, 
said to attain a height sometimes of 300 feet or more. A noticeable 
feature here and there are the huge dense masses of Loranthus 
1 The fact that Jarrah timber appears to be less resistant to the attacks 
of termite and teredo now than formerly raises an interesting question and 
one of great commercial importance. Experiments are now being made to 
test the possibility of increasing the resisting quality of the wood by chemical 
treatment. 
