70 THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
NOTES ON THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF CASINO 
DISTRICT, NOVEMBER, 1914. 
By Miss F. M. Irby: 
In the brushes and along the banks of the creek there 
are still numbers of trees and creepers flowering; the deli- 
cate Pithecolobium pruinosum (Syn. Albizzia pruinosa) 
is a ight feathery mass of buff and cream. 
Barly in the month the Brown Cedar (Hhretia acwmi- 
nata) fiowered. It is an insignificant little flower, borne 
in large drooping bunches; but when this tree gets its 
leaves (which it loses in the winter), it is one of the 
most handsome brush foliages. While the leaves are young 
it is nearly always attacked by various species of small 
beetles; they destroy the fresh shoots and flowers to such 
an extent that year after year it 1s almost impossible to 
find a bunch of berries. If they leave it alone it is a 
sight worth seeing about Christmas time, with its large 
erape-like bunches of tiny yellow berries. 
Another insignificant little flower plentiful all along 
the edge of the water is the Mallotus phillipinensis. The 
Rufus fantail, Rhipidura rufifrons, loves this tree. In 
this district I have never found its wee cup nest on any 
other tree. Last spring we found four of these tiny 
eradles in one small patch of serub, and all were built on 
Mallotus bushes; and the size and shape of the leaves, and 
the colour of the dead or withered ones, so resembled the 
nests that it would have been almost impossible to find 
them but for the excited movements of the nervous little 
owners. ; 
There are still a few flowers on the Finger limes, 
Citrus Australasica, although most of the fruit is almost 
full-grown. 
The handsome dark-green Serub Crab-Apple, Sider- 
oxylon Australe, is covered with gmall greenish-white flow- 
ers, and there is still ripe fruit hanging on the branches. 
The ‘‘Wild Wistaria,’’ Wistaria Maideniana (Syn. Mille- 
tia Maideniana) is still flowering. The Bean trees, Cas- 
tanospermum australe, are beautiful, not only the 
branches, but even the great thick stems, covered with the 
scarlet and yellow flowers. I have seen Bean trees grown 
about Sydney, but the trees looked mere dwarfed weeds, 
and the flowers were pallid parodies of the brilliant blos- 
soms that deck our northern streams. The Leather-heads, 
eS 
