Australian Meeting of the British Association. 61 
overhead, the great variety of species mingled together, the enormous 
number of epiphytes often forming bushy excrescenses on the 
branches or trunks of the trees, the many lianes or “ vines ” with 
their rope-like stems dangling apparently from the sky, the gloom, 
the impenetrability, the silence. Animal life seemed strangely 
absent. We startled a solitary scrub turkey which flew up noisily 
and disappeared, but we saw little else. In one spot we heard 
repeatedly the call of the Whip-bird but we caught no sight of them. 
A preliminary whistle, easy to miss without close attention, is 
followed instantly by a loud crack like that of a whip lash. An 
excursion on foot through similar scrub covering the top of Mount 
Tambourin gave opportunity for examining the vegetation more in 
detail. Among lianes one of the most characteristic are the so- 
called Lawyer Canes (species of Calamus, Palmeae). The long weak 
straggling stem lies on the ground or on the undergrowth, or hangs 
down from the branches of trees up which it has scrambled its way. 
The leaf rachis is armed with curved prickles; prickles also occur 
on the leaf sheaths and the margins of the leaf segments thus entan¬ 
gling together everything with which it comes in contact, oneself 
included. A few yards walk off the track in this virgin scrub is 
sufficient to demonstrate the difficulty of penetrating this jungle 
vegetation without some implement wherewith to cut or hack one’s 
way through. Another curious Palm seen was the Walking Stick 
Palm, Bacnlaria ( Kentia) monostachya , with a slender stem 6 to 12 
feet high, which is sometimes made into walking sticks. The stems 
of the Water Vines (species of Vitis) forming less flexible hanging 
loops or festoons were abundant. They owe their popular name to 
the fact that, if a length of the stem be cut out and held up, a drink 
can be obtained by collecting the water which drips from the lower 
end. In another liane met with the flexibility of the stem is so marked 
as to have earned for the plant the popular name of “ Supplejack.” 
(This was probably Rhipogon album, a genus allied to Smilax ). 
Many examples were seen of “ buttress ” roots, a formation common 
here among many tree forms. “Strangling Figs” also abounded, 
the trunks of the doomed trees serving as supports showing all 
stages of envelopment by the descending roots of the fig tree. 
Among other lofty trees which were identified may be mentioned 
the Moreton Bay or Hoop Pine ( Araucaria Cunninghami), a beautiful 
Eucalyptus with a smooth silver-white trunk (Water or Flooded 
Gum) and the endemic Castanospermum australe (Leguminosae). 
At one spot pods of the last-mentioned tree measuring about 
