310 
Fulica Tasmanica ? 
commander of the government schooner Eliza , tells me that he was not 
himself waked by the motion , but by his wife, who was much terrified 
by the phenomenon. An intelligent but unfortunate person, of the 
name of Thomas, many years ago pilot upon the Tamar, and now resid¬ 
ing upon Clarke’s Island, tells me that he distinctly perceived the shock, 
having been then driven ashore upon Cape Barren Island, where he was 
lying at the moment wind-bound, awake, and earnestly, as he says, 
watching the state of the weather.” 
Near Launceston on the 18tli August the weather was fine and clear, 
with a southerly wind—as it had been for the two previous days. The 
barometer at 9 a. m. indicated 29.846, attached thermometer 48° Fahr. 
Thermometer in the air and shade, 46 Q ; at 3 p. m. the barometer was 
29.759 ; attached thermometer, 53 ; and thermometer in the air and 
shade, 53. No shock of an earthquake was perceived. 
At the Magnetic Observatory, Hobart Town, no unusual disturbance 
was observed.—E d. Tasm. Journ. 
ALSOPHILA AUSTRALIS. 
Mr. Backhouse, in his interesting visit to the Australian.colonies, 
speaking of Philip’s Island, Macquarie Harbour, Tasmania, says “ We 
walked over the. island, and down one of its sides, which was woody, 
and which exhibited the finest tree-ferns wc had seen, and in great pro¬ 
fusion. They were of two kinds, one of which we did not meet with 
elsewhere. Some of their larger fronds or leaves were thirteen feet long, 
making the diameter of the crest twenty-six feet. The stems were of all 
degrees of elevation, up to twenty-five or thirty feet; some of them, at 
the lower part, were as stout as a man’s body ; those of Cibotium Bil- 
lardieri were covered with roots on the outside : the whole length of 
those of the other species— Alsophila Australis — was clothed with the 
bases of old leaves, which were rough like the stems of raspberries, 
closely tiled over each other, and pointing upwards.” 
The Alsophila Australis , as also the Cibotium Billardierif Dichsonia 
Antarctica , Labill.J grow at the Asbestos llills, near York Town ; but 
I observed the base of the trunk of the Alsophila to be covered with 
coarse root-like fibres, although to a very much less extent than in the 
Dichsonia . The fronds too are differently shaped—those of the Also¬ 
phila being much broader in the middle, and tapering off more rapidly 
towards the extremity. The young ones, before expansion, are covered 
with chaffy scales very different from the fine soft hair-like down which 
clothes the bases of the fronds of the Dichsonia.: — R. C. Gunn, Laun¬ 
ceston. 
FULICA TASMANICA ? 
When at Arthur’s Lakes in March, 1843, 1 shot a small Coot, the only 
specimen of the genus which I have ever met with in the island : it must 
be extremely rare. I have called it Fulica Tasmanica ? Upper parts 
dusky slate colour ; under parts, dark ashy-grey ; head and neck, black; 
frontal plate white, and of small size; bill, greenish; tarsi and feet, 
black; about thirteen inches long. Length from carpus to second 
quill, 7 5-10th inches; ditto of bill, 1 4-l0ths; ditto tarsus, 2; ex¬ 
ternal toe and claw, 2 5-lOths; ditto middle ditto, 3 3-I0ths: ditto 
internal ditto, 2 5-10ths; ditto hallux, 1 2 -lOths.— James Grant, 
Launceston . 
