THE AUSTRALIAN NA'TURALIST. 183 
large hairy leaf, is very plentiful. The maiden’s blush 
trees are a beautiful sight, with their white-crowned heads; 
they always remind me of a Dombeya tree, but on a much 
larger and handsomer seale. ; 
Bird life is by no means plentiful in such parts of the 
'weed as I have visited; Dollar birds, Macleay Kingfishers, 
and the big red and blue Pennants Paroquet seemed most 
humerous. A curious brown water snake is plentiful in 
the big swamp drains. In the swamps grow great quan- 
tities of the beautiful climbing maiden-hair. 
In the more dense scrubs it is almost impossible to 
obtain specimens owing to the way in which all vegeta- 
tion pushes upwards to the light. Fernlike-creepers cover 
the stems of many of the trees, and the Elkhorns, Stag- 
horns, and Orchids that deck both trunk and branches, 
looking as though someone, with careless hand, had scat- 
tered them. there, sticking where they fell, in most hap- 
hazard fashion. Where a patch has been burnt, wild 
passion-vines, with star-like, creamy flowers twine over the 
decaying remnants of the forest. Near the beach, Mooball 
Creek is a sight not easily forgotten. All up the wide 
bed, Nymphea stellata, the little blue lily; with a scent 
like an elusive dream, massed in thousands, until the wide 
stream 1S one giant wave of blue. 
A very dainty white-flowered creeper is fairly plenti- 
ful. It is not unlike a glorified blackberry bush. But in 
October all else pales beside the native Wistaria, growing 
so rankly, the bunches so huge, often seventeen or eighteen 
racemes of blossom clustered together in one glorious flower 
head. 
I saw one tiny creek, where the scrub grew wild and 
rank, the water was shaded by huge vine-covered trees 
on either side, struggling to reach the light, palms bent 
across the dark and narrow stream, and draping the 
undergrowth with a curtain fortunes could not buy, hung 
the Wistaria, a mauve and purple mass. In the distance 
old Mount Warning loomed, fit background to the scene; 
and it took some moments to remember it was only our 
““Grey Australia,’’? for it might have beep old Japan. 
