BOTANICAL NOTES. 
BY L Rodway, C.M.G,, Government Botanist. 
The site of the Easter Gamp at Ad¬ 
venture Bay was a good one for the bot¬ 
anist. Perhaps it did not possess a very 
great variety of flowers, but then it is 
not usual for flowers to be out at Easter, 
and there was plenty to be learned es¬ 
pecially by those whose studies take 
a wide range and include the lower 
forms. The damp gullies were rich 
with ferns, mosses and fungi; also there 
were added thereto a numerous brood 
•of small hut aggressive leeches which 
found every weak spot in our clothing. 
The forest consists mostly of gum- 
trees of which the various forms of 
stringy are present with a generous mix¬ 
ture of blue-giun. Hound the shore 
and on the hills towards Penguin Is¬ 
land the prevailing tree is white pepper¬ 
mint. This tree remains small and is 
seldom straight. but it is very 
durable. It is a common tiling 
to see posts of it which have 
been in the ground for forty years 
and upwards ami are still sound. Most 
timber men from the Northern Hemis¬ 
phere smile with a most superior ex¬ 
pression of doubt when told that one of 
our woods "ill stand between wind and 
water for 411 years, but there are plenty 
of fences in old settled districts which 
demonstrate this. Here is an instance. 
In 1878 Mr. Counsel cut a track towards 
the west coast via lakes St. Clair and 
Petrarch and his mile pegs though wea¬ 
ther worn are thoroughly efficient to¬ 
day. Sometime the value of our Eucalypt 
timber will be understood. In the in¬ 
terval it is going up to heaven in vol¬ 
umes as a sacrifice by the bush fires. 
The effect of humidity of atmosphere 
is very noticeable. Trees such as beech 
and horizontal, which on Mount Welling¬ 
ton do not occur below a thousand feet 
altitude are plentiful in the region of 
our camp at four hundred feet. As 
you go towards the rain this becomes 
more apparent. Beech, horizontal, and 
laurel grow at sea-level at Recherche, 
while at Maeqtiurie Harbour Gunn’s 
raspberry grows at sea-level, while here 
it is never met with much below the 
plateau of Mount Wellington. 
Near the camp a disused tramway 
went into the bush for miles. In the 
latter part of its course it went through 
a beech forest, erroneously called myr¬ 
tle. with an undergrowth chiefly of hor¬ 
izontal and cutting grass. The first of 
t liese is not yet in the list of trees use¬ 
ful to man, but the latter provides a 
most excellent pulp for paper making, 
and probably some day when we come to 
exploit our less apparent resources, we 
shall cultivate cutting grass in waste 
places for the purpose of paper making. 
Our beech forests are sadly neglected. 
The wood is handsome and excellent for 
flooring boards, furniture, panelling, tool 
handles and a host of purposes, but 
there it stands and rots, and apparent¬ 
ly it will not he wanted till the bush 
fires have consumed most of it. 
Of lower plants, mosses, lichens, and 
such, there were quantities for the 
expert. 
DR. G. HORNE, MELBOURNE. 
IS 
