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THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 21 
THE MANGROVE SWAMP. 
(By OC. Hedley, F.L.8.) 
In his presidential address before the Biological Section of the 
Australian Association for the Advancement of Science, Mr. 
Hedley remarked :— 
It has been the fashion to regard a mangrove swamp as 
a noisome, repulsive, and unpleasant place. But I find it 
pretty, interesting, and attractive. Looking down from a 
hilltop, the mangrove swamp stretches below like some vast 
green meadow, and if the tide be full the green is veined with 
silver. ‘Transported to the silver streak one may row up a 
long green lane hedged in by walls of dense and glossy foliage. 
To my taste, the mangrove flora is both quaint and beau- 
tiful. A delightful recollection of bygone years is a stream 
winding through a glorious avenue of dwarf Nipa palms, 
whose lordly fronds arched over 30 ft. of water. Again, I have 
a picture in my mind’s eye of still water, in the foreground, 
then an expanse of brown mud, where a litter of calling crabs 
have burrowed ; they raise the defiant claw, and illumine the 
mud bank with vivid scarlet or orange patches; behind, the 
hedge of mangrove advancing on great stilt roots of hoops 
arching from a complex of great and greater hoops. Above 
and beyond a background of dark and glossy foliage massed 
like an orange grove. 
In adverse climates the pioneer of the mangrove forest is 
Avicennia, which as a dwarfed bush struggles south to New 
Zealand and South Australia. Before the Queensland border 
is reached, first Aegiceras and the Rhizophora has joined it 
and going north the forest gains recruits with every few de- 
grees of latitude. 
For protection against wind and weather the mangrove 
forest is girt with the tough, firm-rooted Rhizophora. Behind 
its shelter grow the weaker trees. Where the water turns 
from brackish to fresh is the sweet-smelling Aegiceras. A 
delightful chapter in the story of this weird world is Dr. H. 
B. Guppy’s account of the fructification of Rhizophora. 
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
NeEcrotogy.—One by one the old school of naturalists are 
being removed by the hand of time. Included amongst these 
are Professor Gustav Kraatz, who was for years prior to his 
demise, the world’s greatest authority on the Cetonidae, and 
Dr. Ludwig Koch, the well-known Arachnologist. In this 
