90 THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
ned 
apparatus to become filled. Bottles of dilute formalin soon 
held a multitude of specimens, and botanical presses began 
to creak with a wealth of growth torn from their native heath. 
A sectional party under Mr. S. J. Johnston went away into 
the bangalow scrub and returned with birds, botanical speci- 
mens and parasitical forms of life of more interest to science 
than to the general public. Later on a second party of bota- 
nists and entomological students broke into the luxuriant bell- ° 
bird scrub, and, while the dainty feathered creatures sounded 
their cheerful notes, which echoed like the silvery tinkle of 
tiny bells of exceptional quality, sought for wonders of the 
forest. 
Messrs. E. Cheel and W. B. Gurney led this excursion, and 
the party was soon busy amongst the young bangalow and 
cabbage tree palms, and the various thorny shrubs which the 
ordinary bushman calls ‘‘lawyer,’’ but for which the botanist 
has a dozen or more names. A few torn garments resulted 
from encounters with the lawyer vines and shrubs, but na- 
turalists are superior to little troubles of that character, and 
there was not a hobble skirt or even a fashionable blouse to be 
sacrificed, although plenty of attractive dresses were worn 
after field work was over. 
Some of the party were anxious to discover scrub leeches, 
but the leeches discovered them first. Four of the men found 
the creatures fastened to their legs, when a couple had com- 
menced their blood-sucking operations. The leeches that thus 
endeavoured to get even with the explorers who broke into 
their domain went into the formalin bottles without a requiem 
hymn. None of the party have nerves where insects are con- 
cerned. In one of the bedrooms occupied by two ladies a com- 
‘munity of paper-nest wasps had built their habitation, and 
all day long slew spiders and conveyed them to their store- 
house. They were friendly eyes that gazed upon the opera- 
tions of the wasps, and apparently the venomous creatures 
knew it, for they stung no one. 
Mr. Cheel found a fine specimen of the Jew’s ear fungus 
(Hirneola auricula-judea) growing on a dead log. This fun- 
. goid growth is only found, like the lichens, growing luxuriant- 
ly in pure air which gets the tang of the salt sea about it. 
Its greatest habitat is the South Sea Islands, where it is 
collected and sold to the Chinese at high rates per pound for 
the making of some of their expensive and mysterious soups. 
Mr. Cheel expressed the opinion that plenty of these fungi 
could be obtained in this State. 
Another discovery was some eggs of the active lizard (Yger- 
nia whiteii), a reptile named after a great naturalist who 
specialised in lizards. The eggs were kept in a bottle, and 
