Western Range , Tasmania. 
137 
and is of little use except for ornamental work, such 
as picture frames, &c., for which it is well adapted, 
as it is beautifully veined. The white gum is also 
found dead in some localities. Certain trees, as the 
she-oak (Casuarina stricta and quadrivalvus ), and 
likewise the Acacia , thrive well among the dead 
Eucalypti; and thus in some measure tend to impart a 
rather less forbidding aspect to the tract where the dead 
trees abound. 
It may as well perhaps be mentioned here that the 
Acacias also frequently perish at certain spots; but this 
is effected by a caterpillar, which eats the whole of the 
leaves, and thus the tree is left entirely bare, and then 
dies. While this caterpillar, which is of small size, 
destroys the Acacias, another much larger attacks the 
grain, merely eating through the stem close to the ear, 
which then falls on the ground. The countless multitudes 
of these destructive creatures would appear incredible by 
description; nor did I believe what 1 had heard of their 
numbers until I personally witnessed a body of them 
migrating from one spot to another. These formed a 
dense column, about two feet wide, with numerous 
stragglers, and were all hurrying with their utmost speed 
directly towards the setting sun. It was so late that I 
had not time to trace where the column terminated, but 
I walked up it nearly 400 yards, and found that they 
collected from a field of wheat. They were in a shallow 
trench four feet wide ; and so close together that I could 
not in any part of the column have introduced the 
point of a finger without touching several. 
I have remarked that I was disappointed with the 
scenery of the Great Lake, and such was the case with 
the Western Range generally; the absence of the bold 
peaks of Alpine regions leaving little to excite the 
admiration of the traveller. Yet there is a certain interest 
