ii THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
what a stimulus to others to do likewise, what a record for 
future scientists! 
Then, apart from our especial work in connection with ob- 
servation and record in the Society, there are the wider ques- 
tions in which as true naturalists we should interest ourselves 
and on which we should speak with no uncertain voice. Our 
beautiful and unique bush is rapidly disappearing before the 
suburban builder and the suburban landowners, who will pay 
fairly large sums of money in buying plants with which to fill 
the garden from which they have stripped every vestige of the 
natural flora. Have we no work to do in showing that our 
Epacris and Leucopogons are every whit as beautiful as the 
African heaths, that our shrubs can vie with those of any coun- 
try. that. our trees are worthy of being retained and not rooted 
out to make way for those of other lands? 
Happily for us, and for all who love nature, the gullies of 
our northern heights are still free from such “improvements” 
and their very configuration will save them for many a year to 
be things of beauty and joy. Though their steepness defies the 
builder and his works, there are other enemies abroad: the 
woodcutters are always at work, not merely thinning out the 
timber by a plan based on knowledge and reason, but ruthlessly 
exntting, leaving bareness and desolation in their train. Have 
we no protest to utter against this wholesale destruction? Have 
we no voice to raise in defence of our beautiful Eucalypts, of 
our Angophoras, surely one of the most beautiful, as it is per- 
haps the most artistic of trees? Had there been some one to 
protect our flora in the early days we should be able to find 
the Christmas Bush~ (Ceratopetalum gummiferum) in all its 
glory, close about Sydney, as we see it elsewhere farther afield, 
a glorious tree and not merely dwarf, secondary growths from 
the stumps of trees felled that there might be wood for buttey 
boxes and axe-handles. Not that butter-boxes and axe-handles 
are not necessary to the community; they are so, but why sacri- 
fice such plants for them when others would have done? Ocea- 
sionally I come across a waratah, but then I must be far afield 
and out of the way of the tripper and the professional ‘flower- 
gatherer. These stately plants should be as common on our 
northern heights as at Colo Vale and Hill Top. Have we no 
word of protest against the wholesale destruction - of flowers 
which is still going on around us, and which, if unchecked, will 
continue till Christmas Bells (Blandifordia), the Flannel Flowez 
