the VICTORIAN
NATURALIST

Vol. 86, No. 9 September, 1969

Published by the

FIELD NATURALISTS CLUB OF VICTORIA

In which is incorporated the Microscopical Society of Victoria

Registered in Australia for transmission by post as a pertodical

45 cents

F.N.C.V. DIARY OF COMING EVENTS

GENERAL MEETINGS

Monday, 8 September—General Meeting in National Herbarium, The Domain, South
Yarra at 8.00 p.m.

Minutes, Reports, Announcements.

Correspondence.

Subject for evening—‘The Coolart Story”, Mr. W. Davis.

New Members—

General Business 6. Nature Notes and Exhibits.

GROUP MEETINGS
(8 p.m. at National Herbarium unless otherwise stated)

Thursday, 11 September—Botany Group Meeting.

Wednesday, 17 September—Microscopical Group Meeting.

Friday, 26 September—Hawthorn Junior F.N.C. Meeting at Hawthorn Town Hall at
8 p.m.

Wednesday, 1 October—Geology Group Meeting.

Thursday, 2 October—Mammal Survey Group Meeting in Fisheries and Wildlife
Rooms at 7.45 p.m.

Friday, 3 October—Preston Junior F.N.C. meeting in Rechabite Hall, 251 High St.,

: at 8 p.m.

Monday, 6 October—Entomology and Marine Biology Group Meeting.

Thursday, 9 October—Botany Group Meeting.

Friday, 10 October—Montmorency District Junior F.N.C. meeting in Scout Hall
Petrie Park, Montmorency at 8 p.m.

F.N.C.V. EXCURSIONS

Sunday, 21 September—Churchill National Park. Leader Mr. F. Zirkler. The coach
will leave Batman Avenue at 9.30 a.m. fare $1.50, bring one meal. Please make
bookings for this excursion direct with the leaders as the excursion secretary will
be on holidays.

Friday, 26 December to Sunday, 4 January—Mt. Beauty. A coach has been chartered
for this excursion which will remain with party for use in day excursions to the
Bogong High Plains, Mt. Hotham and other places. Accommodation has been
booked at the Mt. Beauty Chalet for the coach party at $6.00 per day dinner,
bed and breakfast with picnic meals available at 50 cents. The inclusive coach
fare of $20.00 should be paid by the November general meeting to the excursion
secretary all cheques being made out to Excursion Trust. Accommodation to be
paid for individually.

246 Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

The
Victorian Naturalist

Editor: G. M. Ward
Assistant Editor: P. Gahan

~ Vol. 86, No. 9 4 September, 1969
CONTENTS

Articles:

Frog-hunting up the East Coast Part 2. By Densey Clyne ...... 249
Further Investigations in the Kent Seep: ee M. A. Neteusen and

S. Murray-Smith ....._... 4 254

Feature:
Ixeadersi. Nature. Notes and. Queries ..- 2. 0. - oe. fee ee. 248

Book Reviews:

The life of the Emu

A Handlist of the Birds of South Australia

Australian Wildflowers in Colour eee 2 PHS hen N . Sale® Geocieis Bast ee 259
Field Naturalists Club of Victoria:

August- Meeting Report and Group Reports ...°.. .. 0... 0 2. 0 e. J Jf p2
Didiy or Coming EventS o> 0600S) a Pe eo ee ee 246

Front Cover:

Reproduced here is one of Mrs. Edith Coleman’s photographs of the echidna
named “Prickles”. The story of “Stickles” and “Prickles” appeared in the Vict.
Nat. for October 1938.

September, 1969 247

Readers’ Nature Notes and Queries

These columns are available for all members, young and old, to bring
before others their own observations in nature, Correspondence may be sent
to the Editor, 54 St. James Road, Heidelberg.

Crimson Chats
W. Denny of Lavers Hill Victoria
writes—

Mr. Chisholm mentions in his Bright
days in Birdland having observed the
Crimson Chat in Maryborough (Vic.) last
October. He thinks it may be the most
southerly record for this bird.

However I think I can claim that, with
an observation last December (1968), I
saw a male bird at Marengo, a small
village about 2 miles south of Apollo Bay
on the Ocean Road, and as the crow flies,
approximately 5 miles from Cape Otway,
which is the second most southerly part
of Australia. Wilson’s Promontory is the
first.

The bird was clearly seen and I am
_almost sure the female was there too, but
I caught only a glimpse of her and it
was before I saw the male and I con-
cluded it was a beautiful firetail.

I was at Round Hill Reserve and had
as my travelling companion from the
Congress (R.A.O.U.) at Canberra Mr.
Winston Filewood of New Guinea. We
saw the birds often at Lake Cargelligo
and attempted to photograph the nest;
this was in October and November 1968.

Strangely enough had one substituted
Lake Cargelligo’s expanse of water for
the Southern Ocean, the habitats were
almost identical. The site is the Apollo
Bay rifle range, there are clumps of
bramble dotting the long dry grass right
to the water’s edge.

I first saw these birds out of Broken
Hill when I drove Gordon Binns
(R.A.O.U.) (general secretary and past
president) there to see the wedge bill
and am perfectly familiar with them.

A new bird for one’s district is always
a thrill, I was most excited at my
discovery.

Brush Turkeys

Mr. W. R. Gasking, who wrote the

248

notes on Black Swans in these columns
last month, also sends these notes.

One warm day at the Sir Colin Mac-
kenzie Sanctuary at Healesville, I was
watching the Brush Turkey male. He had
a large, well heaped mound, and appeared
excited—running about the aviary, chas-
ing the hen whilst she remained on the
ground, and often lightly scratching the
top cover of the mound. I suspected that
a hatching was imminent, so waited.
Already, a number of chicks had hatched.

Presently I became aware of a strong
perfume not unlike lemon essence. This
was only noticeable for a short time, but
during that time the male bird was
extremely excited. There was no sign of
movement from the mound; which may
have indicated an emerging chick. There
was no wind at the time, which may have
carried the perfume to the area. I
unsuccessfully searched around for the
source, Returning to the aviary on the
other side, I again noticed it, and saw
that the bird was excited. No plant was
in flower nearby, which could have
accounted for the scent.

Presently I was called away for an hour
or so; and upon my return the male had
quietened down and was quietly scratch-
ing; while a newly emerged chick perched
on a branch, about five feet above the
ground.

I often wonder if a connection exists
between the perfume, and the emergence
of the chick. Perhaps it stimulates the
male into an aggressive attitude towards
intruders whilst hatching takes place.

Can any other reader comment upon
this?

[Although birds have _ nostrils, it
appears that their sense of smell is poorly
developed; and to rely on such a sense
for an indication of an important event
seems unlikely. Perhaps the untimely
presence of a human caused the excite-
ment. (Ed.)]

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

Frog-hunting up the East Coast
Part 2

_ My next stop was at Gin Gin, west
of Bundaberg in Southern Queensland.
The Council Rest Area where I
camped was close to Gin Gin Creek,
and bordered on one side by an
extensive grassy swamp.

At dusk, when I arrived, numerous
Dwarf Tree Frogs (H. bicolor) were
calling from grass stems and twiggy
plants, clearly silhouetted against both
the evening sky and its reflection in
the water. This little frog is very vari-
able in the proportions of green to
brown skin colouring; the skin is
usually smooth, but here I found two
specimens with small raised warts or
pimples scattered lightly over the dor-
sal surfaces. The call appeared similar
to those of the New England District.

By nightfall, it was clear that the
swamp was a habitat for a vast number
of frogs of several different species,
and I spent three or four hours wading
about with a torch. The water was
nowhere more than 15 inches deep,
and apart from reeds and grass there
were clumps of thicker vegetation
partially submerged, and paperbark
and eucalypt trees around the edges.

From the grass among trees around
the drier borders of the swamp, came
single, repeated notes, rather like the
call of the Common Froglet (C. signi-
fera) but a little shorter and lower-
pitched. The tiny frogs were very hard
to locate, a call invariably seeming to
come from several feet ahead when I
was in fact almost treading on the
caller. They were concealed in shallow
hollows in the dry earth under grass

September, 1969

by DENSEY CLYNE

and debris, and the dark inflated vocal
sacs of the calling males were not
easily picked up by the torch beam.
These frogs turned out to be the
Yellow-spotted Toadlet (U. marmor-
ata) and this was the first time I had
heard their call.

A small group of Brown Frogs (L.
peroni) could be heard in soft chorus
around the edges of a clear pool, and
in the distance, the twanging notes of
several Banjo Frogs (L. dorsalis).

At dusk I had heard a shrill, long-
drawn-out bleating call a little like that
of Keferstein’s Tree Frog (Hyla den-
tata) coming occasionally from the
trunks of Eucalypts around the rest
area. Now, in the dark, the calls came
from every part of the swamp, close
to the water. There must have been
scores of individual frogs, and the en-
tire chorus appeared to resolve itself
into alternating high and slightly lower
calls. The inflated vocal sacs of the
calling males were almost transparent.

This species was identified later as
H. rubella. It is a small, light brown
frog, unpatterned except for a broad,
darkish, diffuse band which runs along
the flanks. A smaller stripe may run
forward on either side from the groin
up towards the midline, and also a
faint broad band of the same darker
colouring down the centre of the back.

In its call, its general body propor-
tions, and the characteristic twist of
the head on the rather long body, this
frog resembles H. dentata. It is inter-
esting to note that round about the
N.S.W./ Queensland border it appears

DAIS)

to take over from AH. dentata, which
occurs south from there to the Jervis
Bay area.

From a paddock across the highway,
I heard a call every now and then
which at first I took to be Peron’s Tree
Frog (H. peroni) warming up—a few
loud, clear notes, descending the scale.
However, it never became the long,
jackhammer call that I expected, and
I was unable to find the caller.

My most interesting encounter that
night was with the Rocket Frog (H.
nasuta). A series of calls was coming
from some partly submerged shrubs
at a distance from me; they started
quietly and worked up to an excited
yapping sound which came in irreg-
ular, rapid bursts, and continued long
enough for me to approach and see
the caller. I had never seen the species
before, but it was easy enough to iden-
tify—a small, streamlined frog, with
dark brown longitudinal stripes on a
light background, it sat on a partly
submerged log pointing at an angle to
the sky the unmistakeably long snout
that gives the species its common
name. This frog belongs to the H.
lesueuri group, some members of
which are very difficult to distinguish
apart, but no other species of Hyla in
Australia has such a long snout as the
Rocket Frog. The body measures about
40-50 mm from snout to vent.

The only other species in the swamp
was identified by its call the next
morning, though I did not see it—the
Striped Marsh Frog (L. tasmaniensis).

Early next morning, Eric Zillman,
well-known local naturalist, turned up
in his Landrover and offered his help,
ard we drove around the area to look
for further species. L. tasmaniensis
and L. peroni were calling around the
edges of paddock ponds. We found
numbers of A. rubella clustered under
the bark of logs and trees, but the
most interesting find was a group of

250

frogs under the bark of some tree-
stumps left standing in a swampy pad-
dock. At first sight I exclaimed “Hyla
peroni!” but some aspects of the frogs
immediately puzzled me. The general
colour was mottled brown, sometimes
changing to plain putty colour. In the
groin and hidden thigh areas were the
bright yellow and black pattern of H.
peroni. But the tiny emerald green
specks found on the dorsal surface of
the latter were missing. The eyes of H.
peroni are rather remarkable, being
large and protuberant, and showing, in
daylight, an unmistakeable cross at the
centre of the golden iris. These Gin
Gin frogs not only lacked the cross,
but the upper part of the iris was
bright red! The Australian Museum
later identified them tentatively from
photographs as H. rothi, a close rela-
tive of H. peroni which perhaps re-
places it in the north. I wondered if
the H. peroni-like calls heard the
night before could have been those of
this species.

That night, Eric called for me again
and we drove across country in the
landrover three miles upstream to
where Gin Gin Creek ran between
steep banks through scrub or rain-
forest. We left the landrover and stop-
ped for a few minutes by a narrow
stream bordered by grass and bog,
where I recorded a group of Rocket
Frogs. Two males of this species cal-
ling alternately make a sound like a
saw; several together make an excited
gobbling noise like the word “double-
u” repeated faster and faster. Bursts
of calling last for a few seconds, to be
repeated after a long pause.

Eric had told me about mysterious,
loud frog calls he had heard previously
in the vicinity of the creek, and as we
moved into the rain-forest, we heard
in the pitch darkness a single, deep,
resonant ““Wahk!” from the bank high
above the water. This was echoed by

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

other frogs spaced well apart on the
floor of the rain-forest, which was
covered by a litter of large, crisp
leaves. Our torches revealed nothing;
we moved up the bank and tried to
pinpoint one of the calls, but our foot-
steps on the dry leaves silenced the
callers too soon.

We settled down to wait, and after
a while the calls started up again in the
‘distance. I switched on the tape-
recorder, but it was not sensitive
enough. Then apparently from right
underneath us came a loud, clear
“wahk!” which was repeated by several
other frogs close by. I recorded them
for a few minutes, but we still hadn’t
seen anything of the frogs themselves,
though we cleared away a large section
of leaves and debris. But later Eric
spotlighted a pair in amplexus (the
mating position) a few yards away,
and I was able to identify the species
as Mixophyes fasciolatus the Great
Barred Frog.

This is a large, handsome species.
up to 100 mm in length, yellow-brown
in colour with yellowish sides blotched
dark brown. The legs are strikingly
patterned with dark brown triangular

ane

Rana daemeli
(See text page 270)

photo: Author

September, 1969

bars, and the arms are similarly but
not so clearly barred. A dark stripe
begins at the snout, narrows towards
the eye and continues from behind the
eye over the distinct tympanum or
eardrum. The eye is very dark. This is
one of several very similar Mixophyes
species found up the coast. We cap-
tured two more specimens, which I
photographed later.

On the way back to the landrover we
caught several very active, bright yel-
low frogs of the H. lesueuri group,
with rather pointed snouts. These were
never identified satisfactorily from the
specimens, but from photographs were
later thought to be H. lesueuri itself,
though they appeared to me to lack all
the relevant colour patterns and to
have too long a snout. They were so
active that they got loose several times
in my van and I[ found them down
the bed in the morning, luckily un-
squashed.

Then on the sandy shore of the creek
Eric found two fat little frogs, attrac-
tively patterned in shades of brown
with red specks. I was a little baffled
by these; that they were burrowing
frogs was obvious from the shovel-

25

shaped metatarsal and metacarpal tub-
ercles, and they appeared to swell
considerably when placed in a con-
tainer with water, as though capable
of aestivating. Next day Eric took me
to a property where a load of sand had
been dumped by a water trough. He
remembered having seen some small
frogs being dug out of the sand. Sure
enough, he dug out a couple more, and
they were the same species as those of
the night before. They turned out to
be L. ornatus, the Ornate Burrowing
Frog, a relative of the three other
Lymnodynastes species encountered on
this trip, but very different in appear-
ance.

I drove on up to North Queensland,
and my first trip from Cairns was made
a few days later with David Cassels, a
. young member of the North Queens-
land Naturalists’ Club. He had volun-
teered to show me some little frogs I
was keen to photograph and record,
and knew exactly where to find them.
We drove up into the mountains,
turned north towards Mossman, and
then left the road to follow a timber-
men’s route through the jungle high up

Ly 4, : WP
Wy Wt Mn; y Wy; iy
yj; CM
Uy Wei

on a mountainside, 70-odd miles from —

Cairns. !

I parked the van, and David showed
me a way down the steep bank of a
creek that flowed swiftly between boul-
ders of wet, black rock. “‘Listen!” said
David, and IJ heard above the rush of
many small waterfalls a rapid, metallic
“tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, . . ” like
a spoon tapped against a glass.

As soon as we reached the creek,
David bent and picked something up
from the edge of a shallow pool full
of tiny leaves that had fallen from the
dense trees above. ““This is it,” he said,
and so it was—VTaudactylus acutir-
ostris, which I immediately christened
the Tinker Frog. The specific Latin
name means “sharp beak’, and this
species has an even more acutely
pointed snout than A. nasuta; it is so
long that the nostril is halfway between
the eye and the tip of the snout. It is
not, of course, a “tree frog”; and it is
much smaller than H. nasuta, the fe-
male measuring about 30 mm and the
male a little less.

Several males were calling, but as
they seemed to prefer niches behind or

Continued on p. 269

Taudactylus acutirostris
the ‘Tinker Frog’’.

photo: Author

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

Book Reviews

The Life of the Emu

by MAXINE EASTMAN

Angus & Robertson 1969, 72 pp. 87 b and w 12 coloured photographs and line
drawings. $4.50

The author is an American who
travelled extensively over much of
Australia with her husband Bill East-
man, Jnr. when collecting material for
his book “Parrots of Australia” of
which he was joint author with A.
Hunt of Inverell in New South Wales.
This is a book of a collection of photo-
graphs taken by Mrs. Eastman on her

travels, of a bird which must have
attracted her immensely—the Emu.

The chapters cover quite a variety of
subjects such as Importance of Water,
Nesting and Courtship, Looking after
the Young, Emus and Aboriginals, and
their Territory.

Written in a popular style and well
illustrated this is a very good book for
both the child and the adult.

A Handlist of the Birds of South Australia

by H. T. CONDON

~ 2nd Edition Published by the South Australian Ornithological Association 1968. 141
pages, 4 maps, 4 photographs and 2 drawings. $3

Mr. Condon has revised and en-
larged the Handlist to make it an
excellent ornithological publication
covering the bird species that are listed
for South Australia, some 423 native
birds.

Mr. Condon’s work has involved all
the latest trends of taxonomy and this
up-to-date standard is quite different in
most cases to the Official Checklist of
the Birds of Australia published by the
Royal Australasian Ornithologists
Union in 1926. Mr. Condon however

Australian Wildflowers in Colour

is now working on a new R.A.O.U.
Checklist and this South Australian
Handlist could well point the way for
things to come.

His grouping of the Yellow Rosella
with the Crimson Rosella may not
meet the approval of some ornitholo-
gists, but taken all round Mr. Condon
has put a tremendous amount of
thought and research into this Handlist
and it is undoubtedly a worthy addi-
tion to the outstanding works on
Australian Ornithology.

Roy Wheeler, Windsor, Vic. 3181

Photographs by DouGLAss BAGLIN, text by BARBARA MULLINS

Syd., A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1969. $3.95. Hard cover with dust jacket.
Approx. 7” x 73”. 112 pages.

Douglass Baglin and Barbara Mul-
lins have collaborated several times to
produce books on Australian flora, e.g.
Australian Eucalypts and Australian
Wattles. Mr. Baglin is a well-known
commercial photographer noted for
the clearness and exacting detail of his

September, 1969

work. Barbara Mullins, a journalist, is
a co-author of the popular book for
the home gardener Designing Austra-
lian Bush Gardens. Their latest effort,
Australian Wildflowers in Colour,

(turn to page 275.)
253

Further Investigations in the Kent Group

by M. A. MARGINSON and S. MURRAY-SMITH*

The Kent Group of islands is situ-
ated in Bass Strait, approximately
half-way between Wilson’s Promontory
and the northern tip of Flinders Island.
It consists of five islands, only one of
which, Deal Island, is inhabited (by two
lighthouse families). Deal Island is
also the largest of the Group, at the
widest extent measuring four miles by
three and a half miles. It rises to
about one thousand feet, and the upper
slopes are covered by low forest
growth, though much of the island is
grassland, formerly grazed. The Aus-
tralian Conservation Foundation has
approached the Commonwealth gov-
ernment (which owns Deal Island) to
extend permanent protection to the
flora and fauna of this splendid island.4

Across the strong tidal waters of
Murray Pass lie the Tasmanian islands
of Erith and Dover, considerably
smaller than Deal Island, but each
about two miles across at their widest
extremes. Erith Island is held under a
grazing lease. Dover Island holds spe-
cial interest as the last island of any
size remaining in Bass Strait which re-
mains untouched by the hand of man.
The Australian Conservation Founda-
tion is also seeking its protection.

At a further distance from the Kent
Group lie two. seldom-visited and
smaller islands, North East Island and
South West Island.

The authors of this article belong
to a group which has been regularly
visiting the Kent Group since 1962.
During December 1968 and January
1969 five weeks were spent there, with
headquarters on Erith Island, and in-
vestigations commenced earlier were
continued. An account of these earlier
investigations, together with some

JL Sy

background historical material on the
Kent Group, will be found in the Vic-
torian Naturalist 84, (8) for August
1967.2 The first of the authors of this
article is a. biochemist, the second a
historian, so neither lays claim to any
professional knowledge in the field of
natural history. t+

We may, however, draw attention
to the fact that scientists are now pla-
cing considerable emphasis on _ the
existence of the Bass Strait islands and
on the importance of the planned ap-
proach to all that happens in these
waters: fishing, extractive industries,
farming on the one hand, the conserva-
tion of the flora and fauna on the
other. “Bass Strait is the world’s
largest area of shallow water so
close to a major metropolis that is
so little studied and so poorly un-
derstood,” said J. W. Warren (Pro-
fessor of Zoology, Monash University)
in the recent series of twelve talks on
Bass Strait broadcast by the Australian
Broadcasting Commission.* Mention-
ing the islands of Bass Strait in the
same breath as Darwin’s Galapagos
Islands, Professor Warren remarked
that in Bass Strait biologists have
“a marvellous opportunity to study the
effects of isolation and_ restricted

* Both of the University of Melbourne.

+ Our group is deeply indebted to Mr. Brian
Stackhouse, of Flinders Island; to Mr. Frank
Goold, of Port Albert; to Mr. and Mrs. Bob
McNeill, of Deal Island; to Mr. and Mrs. Ron
Millington, then of Deal Island, and to Mr. and
Mrs. Jack Lierich of Port Welshpool. Comalco
Industries Pty. Ltd., through the good offices
of Mr. Dean Bunney, kindly supplied our party
with a_twelve-foot aluminium dinghy which
proved seaworthy, robust and easily portable,
and without which our explorations would have
been rendered impossible or vastly more diffi-
cult. Captain H. M. Head, Regional Director
(Victoria) of the Department of Shipping and
Transport, as on previous occasions kindly ex-
tended to us the important privilege of emergency

wireless communication via the Bass Strait light-
house network.

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

Wilsons
Promontory

e Kent

JE Group

Flinders
D> ROUTE, DOVER and NORTH EAST ISLANDS,
ROUTE, DOVER ISLAND, 1967

ae ae
One mile

Erith ls..

Swashway

My ne idon A ae: Nautilus Bay
Francis Pt. ay ya “Vt Mull
‘ . ett
1967 TRACK ----- egle Point sored
1969 TRACK «eeve
/
---. oe
about IOOO yards °
D SIS LAN D
See (7)
CEG wy, . %
Mt. Keary Ag 774g. zr
eee Hoskyn Pea Q
West °
Bluff 747 wivePhilipot Peak
as

Norfolk Pt.

September, 1969 pL) S\

interbreeding between populations”
which “may be unequalled anywhere
else in the world”. Dr. Jeanette Hope,
speaking in the same series, mentioned
that for a country of its size Australia
has very few offshore islands, and that
of these “the islands of Bass Strait are
amongst the most important, both
historically and biologically”.

NorTH EAST ISLAND

North East Island lies rather more
than a mile off Deal Island, but the
distance is deceptive. Although the
ornithologist A. J. Campbell was pulled
over to North East Island in 1890 in
a whale-boat skippered by the veteran
lightkeeper Captain Charles Brown, it
would not be a trip to be essayed
lightly in an oared boat today. Weather
in the middle of Bass Strait is notori-
ously variable, and our own visit, which
was made in Mr. Frank Goold’s 48-
foot fishing boat Marjorie Phyllis
(locally called the “ketch”), started
in calm but misty conditions, had
pleasant sunshine during the couple of
hours we were on the island, and re-
turned to the main Group in the teeth
of a strong and unpleasant westerly.

Campbell, a member of the 1890
Field Naturalists’ Club of Victoria
expedition to the Kent Group,‘ called
North East Island “a huge, coarse,
granite rock, with beetling walls all
round”.® The island is rather under
half a mile long, with mounts at each
end (the higher 340 feet) connected
by a lower saddle. While the ketch
hove to some hundreds of yards off-
shore, members of the party were
ferried ashore in our dinghy (ably
handled in a rather difficult swell by
Mr. Robert Newton), to land at the
apex of the embayment to the south
of the island.

The first scramble is up a steep gully
to the saddle, and it was not long be-
fore we gained our first and dominant
impression of the island — that the

256

whole surface abounds with life. “Sur-
face” is perhaps misleading, for much
of the life is beneath the surface, and
walking everywhere is difficult because
of the ubiquitousness of the mutton-
bird and penguin burrows. One mem-
ber of the party was considerably
disconcerted at finding his big toe in
a mutton-bird’s beak. Fortunately the
Bass Strait folk-lore which prophesied
snakes proved unfounded (the only
snakes observed in recent years in the
Kent Group have been the White-
lipped, Drysdalia coronoides, which is
innocuous to humans, and none of
which was seen on North East Island).

Once on the saddle the choice is
between the two “peaks” of the island.
That on the west is a formidable knob
the granite walls of which discouraged
all but one foolhardy member of the
party. The climb up the eastern, and
slightly higher peak is a simple one.
The soil is sandy with granite out-
crops heavily weathered and decom-
posing, a feature of the rock being
the large crystals of quartz and mica
visible in some of the outcrops.

The vegetation pattern of the island
is simple. Three species, well mingled,
dominate the cover: the Blue Tussock-
grass (Poa poiformis), the succulent
Bulbine lily (Bulbine bulbosa) and the

distinctive purple-stalked composite
Fennel groundsel (Senecio capilli-
folius). The Tussock-grass, inter-

spersed with some Fennel, has captured
the upper levels of the island. None
of the vegetation grows higher than
about three feet. Apart from the above
three species, the only other vascular
plants collected were a pink and
a white variety of the Rounded
Noon-flower or Mesembryanthemum
(Disphyma_ australe), another small
succulent, the Austral Stonecrop
(Crassula sieberiana), and the Sea
celery (Apium prostratum), abundant
on Erith Island but here found only

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

in isolated patches near the shore-
line. A moss, Bryum campylothecium,
was also collected, and turns out to be
a new record for the Kent Group.

As already mentioned, North East
Island is an extensive mutton-bird
rookery, and perhaps the only such
rookery in the Group. There are now
no rookeries on Deal, Dover or Erith,
though on Eyith at least there is plen-
tiful evidence of earlier mutton-bird
‘occupation. (The nesting of mutton-
birds on South West Island has yet to
be established.) The mutton-birds nest
up to the crest of the island, but the
penguin burrows appear to extend only
to about two hundred feet. Penguin
chicks were seen and handled.

A number of gannets were seen,
fourteen or more at one stage, and as
they were circling the island, highly
disturbed, there is some presumption
of nesting.

The most interesting single zoo-

logical observation on North East
Island was, however, probably that of
Dr. John Newton, who clearly and
for some time sighted a small mouse-
like creature. This was almost certainly
a marsupial mouse, either the Swamp
Phascogale (Antechinus. minimis) or
the White-footed Dunnart (Sminthopsis
leucopus). Mrs. Geoffrey Hope has
kindly suggested that, while the latter
is perhaps more likely (and is found in
the Furneaux Group), Antechinus,
which is a larger animal, is more
widely recorded. Some bones have
been found on Deal Island which be-
long to one or other of these species,
but no further identification has been
made. Few records for the Bass Strait
islands of either species have been
established.

Ants and spiders were also noted on
North East Island, and the plentiful
faeces, both weathered and fresh, of
the Cape Barren Goose. No actual
Geese were seen, however, though
local reports within the last ten years

September, 1969

tell of Geese breeding there, and of
fishermen running down the immature
birds for use as crayfish bait. A pair
of Geese landed on Deal Island some
two or three years ago, and excellent
photographs were taken by Mr. Kevin
Underwood, a lightkeeper. More re-
cently a pair were shot and killed by
a Port Welshpool fisherman at Garden
Cove, Deal Island. All in all, from
these and other observations and re-
ports (notably, of course, those of
Dr. Douglas Dorward of Monash
University and of Dr. Eric Guiler of
the University of Tasmania®) it would
appear that the Geese, so very much
an integral part of the landscape and
mythos of Bass Strait, are in the pro-
cess of new colonization or recoloni-
zation. This is welcome news, but while
many of the Bass Strait fishermen are
intelligent and thoughtful men, and
conservationists, as fishermen ought to
be, some remain ignorant, selfish and
proud of the ascendancy they can win
over nature by means of a gun. Cape
Barren Geese are “sitting shots” for
the armed fool, both literally and
metaphorically. And not only Geese:
we observed young fishermen, at an-
chor in the Kent Group, happily
whiling away some boring hours by
potshotting at seagulls. We hoped that
we on shore were not in the line of
fire. There is certainly a case for the
Head Keeper of the lighthouse station
on Deal Island being made a warden
of some kind by the Tasmanian Ani-
mals and Birds Protection Board.

So far as we know, ours was the
first recorded landing on North East
Island since those of Colin Garreau in
1958" and A. H. E. Mattingley in
1938.8

DOVER ISLAND

A central feature of this visit to the
Kent Group was to be an attempt to
reach the summit of Dover Island,
Hoskyn Peak, a 774 feet eminence

PLB yT|

midway along the island’s spine. Two
factors constrained the intention, phy-
sical fitness and the weather. Those of
us who were going to attempt the
climb had to have time enough before-
hand to gradually work up the degree
of physical fitness that previous ex-
peditions indicated would be essential.
Long hours spent sitting at a desk (or
at a dinner table!) do not build the
sort of back and stomach muscles
needed for active camp work and ex-
ploring on uninhabited islands. Once
a degree of fitness had been achieved,
it might still prove impossible to set
off immediately. Erith Island, on which
we were based, is attached to Dover
Island by a rock-strewn “swashway”
and it might be thought that an over-
land route from this connection to
Mount Mullett and thence to the peak
would be the most practicable. But
‘observations made in 1967 and 1968
had indicated that any such attempt
was beyond our resources.? It was
clearly desirable that we approach
from the west, with the lay of the
vegetation rather than against it; and
this meant going by sea to Myrmidon
Bay on the north of Dover, where the
island’s forbidding cliffs give place to
a rocky strand covered with large gra-
nite boulders. At this time, we knew
of no other place where a landing
might be effected with any degree of
safety or of accessibility to the hinter-
land. We therefore needed calm wea-
ther with neither wind nor swell
running from the west—a difficult re-
quirement in the roaring forties.
Eventually the disposition to go,
the right weather and a feeling of
physical preparedness came at once,
and on a beautiful, calm day (21
January) with only a slight breeze
and the gentlest of south-westerly
swells, we set out by dinghy from the
West Cove of Erith Island, a party
of three men (the authors and Dr.
John Newton) and two _ teen-agers

258

(those who explored the Cave of

Erith—see below). Arriving at the 3

swashway between Erith and Dover
with the tide well out, we had just
breath enough left after portaging the
dinghy and outboard across one hun-
dred yards of tumbled boulders and
sharp granite sand to thank the man
that invented aluminium boats. We
then motored along the north of Dover
a little over a mile, and high into
the cod of Myrmidon Bay, where
we landed as we had in 1967 amongst
the granite boulders.

By 11 a.m. we were climbing easily
on one side of a dry water-course and
within fifteen minutes had reached an
elevation of 350-400 feet. Here we
found ourselves in an extraordinary
climax forest of Coast Tea-Tree (Lep-
tospermum laevigatum) dominant to
about twenty feet, interspersed with
sub-dominant Swamp Paper-bark
(Melaleuca ericifolia) and Common
Fringe-Myrtle (Calytrix tetragona)
growing to about ten feet. Where, for
One reason or another, there was a
little more light on the forest floor,
occasional bushes from four to six
feet of the Crimson-berry (Cyathodes
juniperina) of the Large-leaf Bush-
pea (Pultenaea daphnoides) and of the
Variable Sallow Wattle (Acacia
mucronata) were found. Among the
very few readily noticeable plants on
the forest floor were found the Sea
Box (Alyxia buxifolia) and the Red
Correa (C. reflexa var. nummularii-
folia) all of them less than a foot high.
The presence of so many species
makes this forest sound a lively place,
but this was not so. We shall long re-
member those moments spent, often
on all fours, forcing our way through
a tangle of dead wood, rotting or
tinder dry, where death seemed more
in evidence than life, with the loose
chocolate-coloured, friable soil show-
ing between weathered, crumbling
granite rocks, with lichens, moss and

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

decay everywhere. Much of Dover
Island is one big wood heap, and it is
a minor miracle that it has survived
as such into this savage and destructive
age. We are convinced that the Tas-
manian Government ought to act
quickly to declare this remarkable
island not only a national park but a
wilderness area, under the supervision
of a sensitive and informed ranger.
One careless act of a fisherman or a
_yachtsman, or a stray ember from a
fire elsewhere, could destroy this
unique ecological remnant. Equally it
is a minor miracle that no lightning
strike has set it ablaze, and we are
also convinced that a properly staffed
biological expedition should make an
immediate and intensive study of
Dover in case a calamity does even-
tuate.

No description of this forest would
be complete without mention of the
little Hop Goodenia (G. ovata) with
its quiet apple-green leaves and yellow
flowers contrasting oddly with the de-
cay all around it. Indeed, so wide-
spread is this plant in these islands,
that any future Republic of the Kent
Group would most likely adopt its
little flower as the national emblem!

Striking up towards the main ridge
which connects Hoskyn Peak and the
centre, though lesser, peak of Mount
Keary, we found occasional rocky out-
crops which allowed more light to
penetrate into the forest so that the
whole aspect of it gradually changed,
new species appearing and the bare,
dry timber of the tea-tree yielding
some place to leafier species. Just be-
low the main ridge we saw our first
eucalypts of this trip (probably the
Manna Gum, E. viminalis) with green
leaves pleasantly placed low down
where we could see them and not in
an umbrella above us. This gum was
growing to about twelve feet here, as
high as we saw them anywhere, but
as yet it was not plentiful. We gain

September, 1969

the impression from their distribution
here and on Deal Island that gums
don’t like to be too near to places
where salt-spray can reach, but we are
not botanists and this must remain an
impression. Typically, the granite out-
crops just below the main ridge on this
north to north-easterly aspect were
surrounded by a mixture of trees and
bushes about ten feet high, with per-
haps the most common being the
White Kunzea (K. ambigua) inter-
spersed with isolated casuarinas, euca-
lypts and the Coast Tea-tree. Looking
up the slope, we noticed that the gen-
eral height of the vegetation was
diminishing conspicuously to about six
feet and we began to think that our
battle with it might be over before it
had fairly begun, and that we had
exaggerated the likely difficulties. We
were soon to know otherwise.

It was worthy of record at this
stage that, although there were plenty
of crickets, flies, ants and _ lizards
around us, we had seen very little evi-
dence so far—in the way of faeces—
of any large animals, and, most
strikingly, we had seen only one bird
since landing. This paucity of bird life
had been noted previously,? and is in
contrast to the abundant and varied
land- and sea-bird life of Erith Island.

Creeping through rapidly conden-
sing scrub to the main ridge, we saw
many beautiful pink orchid-lilies, pro-
perly Grass Triggerplants (Srylidium
graminifolium) and collected a speci-
men of the Love Creeper vinelet
(Comesperma volubile). Suddenly we
realized that the main ridge had
been reached. But no open view
awaited us, and the hoped-for easy
passage on the weather side failed to
eventuate. The weather side was clearly
impassable, with a repetition of the
tangled dead wood which we had seen
further down. We realize now that at
this particular spot the southerly slope
is protected from the worst of the

Jd} )

south-westerly weather by the bulk of
Phillpot Peak and Mount Keary and
has managed to grow a thick climax
cover. We were driven back to the
north slopes and had a most difficult
half-hour battling our way for about
two hundred yards through dense,
head-high scrub until we could cross
the dry water-course and so come out
on to the more exposed south-west
slopes of the main peak. Looking back
from a point about one hundred feet
above the ridge and the same distance
below the series of summits which con-
stitute Hoskyn Peak, we were greeted
with a good view of the Hogan islands
and of Wilson’s Promontory.

We were standing on a fairly steep
slope, broken up by large areas of
exfoliating granite, the vegetation
either growing to a height of 1-3 feet
in pockets between the rocks (e.g. the
Oyster Bay Pine, Callitris rhomboidea)
or a little higher (stunted casuarinas
and eucalypts) or trailing across the
rocks in an extraordinary fashion,
blown in a north-easterly direction by
the south-west winds (the Manuka,
Leptospermum scoparium). Here and
there were tussocks of Poa poiformis,
the Blue Tussock-grass so common on
North East Island. Other plants col-
lected at this spot were the Coast Tea-
tree and the red Common Heath

260

(Epacris impressa), occasional speci-
mens of which had been seen from
about three hundred feet up.

At 1 p.m. we reached a subsidiary
peak on the north of the summit area
and, for the first time, obtained a clear
view of the main peak, some five hun-
dred yards away and less than one
hundred feet above us. We had been
convinced that we were the first to
come this way, but suddenly we
noticed a large cairn on the main peak.
We were disappointed, and someone
had the bad taste to mutter something
about Amundsen’s black tent and Cap-
tain Scott. However the sight of this
cairn strengthened our desire to reach
it. As it happened, this last small stretch
took nearly an hour and a half to
negotiate.

First we set out in a south-easterly
direction around the contour, but the
presence of a ravine filled with tangled
scrub caused us to alter direction to
the east in an attempt to come on the
peak from the direction of Mount
Mullett — the very course which we
had rejected right at the outset! As
soon as we were a few feet below
the exposed south-westerly ridge con-
necting the two summits, our troubles
commenced. The scrub became in-
describably dense and tangled. For the
first time it was necessary to use a

Scrub-bashing at its worst!
The climb up Dover
Island involved several
hours negotiation of tangled
vegetation like this,

taken at about 400 feet.

Photo: M. A. Marginson
Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

Cairn on Hoskyn Peak,

the 774’ summit of Dover
Island. This sustantial piece
of work, standing five feet
high, was almost

certainly built by the
bluejackets of H. M. S
Myrmidon, a Royal Navy
vessel which surveyed the
Kent Group under the
command of Commander R. F.
Hoskyn R. N. in 1886. So
far as is known this cairn was
not visited between that date
and January 1969.

photo: Jane Mullett

compass, as we had lost sight not only
of each other but of the summit as
well. Few botanical observations were
made of a specific nature, but there was
a general feeling that the plants were
winning. What we mostly remember
is that everything was closer and more
tangled than we had seen before, but
that it was not the strange, dead
wooden world of the lower slopes. Our
only two specific botanical memories
of this area concern the ground—not
surprising since at times our noses
were very close to it. The orchid-lily
was flowering in large patches and in
two places there were areas, about ten
feet in diameter, which were devoid
of all vegetation except for scattered
reeds. (These were also noticed on
Dover Island by the 1967 party.) We
wondered whether these were dried
out marshes, but there seemed no in-
dication of mud cracks; they remain
a mystery.

After about forty-five minutes of
this fruitless bush-whacking we began
to lose heart and, much to the chagrin
of the younger members, a survey of
the almost impenetrable wilderness be-
tween us and the summit from a con-
venient gum tree caused us to turn
back. However our teenagers had ex-
tracted a promise that on the way
back to the lesser peak, where we had
left our packs, we would again try to
bear over to the weather side. The
wisdom of this course became apparent
quite shortly, since the wind seems to

September, 1969

prevent anything much from peeping
over the inter-summit ridge. The cover
dwindled rapidly, and about 2.30 p.m.
we reached the cairn on the main peak,
some three and a half hours and 770
feet above the boulder-strewn strand
of Myrmidon Bay.

The cairn proved to be a massive
thing indeed, large granite rocks
being convened into a roughly cylin-
drical shape, five feet high and
comewhat greater in diameter. In the
centre there was a hole which contain-
ed nothing but a piece of much wea-
thered stick. A record of our arrival
was left protected from the weather
in the cairn, and we stretched out
on it to get some rest. On looking
around, we became more sure that
this cairn was not the product of
some casual exploration (if such a
thing were possible) but that of a
well-disciplined party, and we allowed
our thoughts to conjure up a
vision of a party of bluejackets
from the survey vessel H.M.S. Myr-
midon in 1886, toiling (in orderly
fashion) up the steep broken slope
from the south bay of Dover to
Hoskyn Peak. (Commander Hoskyn to
the most junior officer, Sub-Lt. Smith:
“Mr. Smith, put a cairn up there on
the top by 8 bells, if you please!”’)
For we could now see what we had
failed to see before—that below us
on the south coast of Dover Island
there was a little rocky shore like that
of Myrmidon Bay, where a landing

261

in a small boat would be feasible.
Furthermore the slope, though broken
and steep, seemed to offer nothing
more difficult than a very rough
scramble, being on the weather side
and affording (except in_ isolated
ravines) little opportunity for any
considerable growth of vegetation.
We consoled ourselves with the
thought that, if ours were not the first
ascent of Hoskyn Peak, then it was
almost certainly the second, the first
in Over eighty years, and the first con-
cerned with the scientific exploration
of the island.

The view from the peak was alto-
gether worth every effort which had
been made to get there. A 360° pano-
rama had been opened up, except
where the peaks of nearby Deal Island
slightly occluded the view. We could
see in a magnificent sweep from the
Hogans and Wilson’s Promontory in
the north-west and even to the long
north coast of Tasmania in the south-
west: sheer across Bass Strait. Looking
over Deal we were astonished to see
the roads of Flinders Island some forty
miles away, looking so close that we
were sure that we could see traffic on
them! And everywhere were the lesser
isltands—South West Island standing
out in a silver sea, the Curtis Group,
Pyramid Rock and the other rocks and
islets that make Bass Strait at once
the fascinating and dangerous place
that it is.

The flora at the summit was very
much like that of the south-westerly
slopes described above, granite out-
crops being interspersed with the Oys-
ter Bay Pine, Manna Gum (?) to ten
feet, the Large-leaf Bush-pea and the
Coast Tea-tree, with here and there an
isolated, stunted casuarina. The height
and composition of this cover seemed
to depend very much on quite mar-
ginal differences in exposure to the
south-westerlies, complete exposure
stunting all these plants and driving

262

them into crevices. Most striking was
again the Manuka, with its wind-
blown growths straggling long out over
the exfoliated granite, so that flattened
fans of branches may stretch for up to
twenty feet before the small foliage
area is reached. Other verified speci-
mens from this area, and between the
summits, included the Common Fringe-
Myrile, the Tree Broom-heath (Mono-
toca elliptica), the Tasmanian She-oak
(Casuarina monilifera), an isolated
specimen of the Silver Banksia (B.
marginata) growing some way down
the south-west slope, the Sand-hill
Sword-sedge (Lepidosperma .conca-
vum) and the Slender Rice-flower
(Pimelea linifolia). WLichens, mosses
and fungi collected on Dover are listed
separately at the end of this article,
but no account of the flora would be
acceptable to those who were on this
journey unless it mentioned the li-
chen Cladonia sylvatica with its friable
balls of yellow-green dotted prolifically
wherever the ground was level and a
little clear, and of the equally friable
mounds of the Coral Lichen (Cladia
retipora), great chunks of which we
broke off and carried around with us
in a rather bemused fashion. In the
summit area we also collected faeces
which were probably those of the
Brush-tailed Possum.

After staying nearly half an hour,
we returned to the subsidiary peak in
half the time of the outward journey.
With energies somewhat tried we
dawdled another half-hour here,
savouring the impressive views to the
norih and to the south-west and bask-
ing on the hot rocks like lizards.

At about 4 p.m. we set out for
Myrmidon Bay and, not wanting to
repeat the struggle along the main
ridge, it was decided to make a direct
descent over the granite outcrops on
the northern slopes of Hoskyn Peak.
This proved to be a sensible decision,
but it involved a great deal of crawling

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

Near the entrance

to the Cave of Erith.
The large heap of red
earth is being faced by
the figure in the
foreground.

Photo: Robert Newton

- on all fours over the outcrops and
through dead, dry undercrofts dusty
with pollen and crumbled leaves.
Eventually we reached one of the
dry water-courses and descended
more or less. directly down it.
Here we met with an almost tropical
tangle of vines, green plants and
spider-webs—in fact Dover, like Erith,
abounds with spiders. It was exhausting
work, especially for the leader who
elected to force his way through this
difficult growth; the rest of us were
pleased to benefit from his exertions.
Finally, we burst out of this jungle,
across a bank of succulents and on to
the granite boulders of Myrmidon
Bay at about 5 p.m. The whole ascent
and descent had taken six hours.
Since there was still plenty of day-
light left, we motored around Francis
Point and then Beagle Point into the
embayment on the far western end of
the island. Momentarily, having the
crossing of the swashway in mind, we
considered rounding this end of the
island, and returning home southabout
through Murray Pass. But wisdom
prevailed, the thought of overfalls
at the entrance to the Pass in a heavily
laden, twelve foot dinghy being the
deciding factor. This little excursion
showed that another landing point
probably exists on the north-eastern
side of Beagle Point, rather similar to
that which we had used at Myrmidon
Bay. Apart from the swashway itself,
there would appear to be no other
landing places than the three we have

September, 1969

mentioned, the rest of the coastline
being composed of great granite out-
crops over which the waves swill
incessantly and of beetling cliffs up to
six or seven hundred feet high.

Back at the swashway, we again
carried our boat and motor across,
the tides obstinately refusing to help
us. It was then that we made our last
scientific observation of the day—it
is a curious fact that the specific gra-
vity of aluminium quadruples if it is
allowed to stand for six hours in the
sun on a granite shore. Finally we
motored into our home bay on Erith
at about 7 p.m., having been away only
nine and a half hours, but having been
through one of the most memorable
days that any of us will ever ex-
perience.

THE CAVE OF ERITH

This remarkable natural phe-
nomenon was first entered, so far as
is known, in January 1969 by Jane
Mullett (16) and David Murray-Smith
(15) in an enterprising exploratory
walk.

The cave is situated in the north-
east embayment of Erith Island, called
by us Jane’s Cove, and is visible from
the sea as a cleft in the granite cliffs
below a 466 feet high peak on the
north coast of the island. From the
sea the cleft appears unapproachable,
but investigation shows that a prac-
ticable route lies along the rocks from
the deepest point of Jane’s Cove, pro-
vided that the approach is made at

263

low tide and preferably in westerly
weather. After about a half-mile of
rock scrambling a section of tumbled
rocks is reached which is clearly the
debris of massive rock falls from the
cliffs above. Indeed many great rocks,
weighing hundreds or thousands of
tons, are still poised menacingly on
the heights above.

The entrance to the cave lies some
seventy-five feet above high-water level,
and is reached by a strenuous scram-
ble up a grass slope and then through
tangled bushes and loose rocks at a
forbiddingly steep angle.

The cleft appears imposing enough
from the sea, but the surprise on
reaching its lip is to discover its depth
and extent. The cave dips down below
the entrance level and then rises again,
extending into the cliff face for a dis-
tance of nearly 200 feet before be-
coming a fissure. The proportions of
the cave are regular, the height aver-
aging about thirty-five feet.

A musty smell is immediately notice-
able, but the outstanding feature is the
black, powdery soil covering the floor
of the cave and deadening footfalls.
The black soil is dramatically interrup-
ted by one large mound of red-powdery
material, about eight feet across and
three feet high at the peak, with several
smaller mounds of the same material.
The black base material is fifty per cent
organic, and could be partly bat guano;
the red material also has some organic
content, we are informed by Professor
G. W. Leeper, but is more like an
ordinary clay-loam soil. While this
would be explicable if the cave were of
limestone, it is, however, a granite cave
and hence the red deposits remain
puzzling and samples await further
analysis.

Small drip pools are evident in the
cave, lined with a delicate green moss-
grass, the Nodding Club-rush (Scirpus
cernuus). Specimens of the Slender
Rice-flower (Pimelea linifolia) were

Zoe

collected just outside the entrance to
the cave, and plant leaves were col-
lected from near a water drip on the
wall, some forty feet in from the en-
trance, but were not identifiable.
Some short stalactites up to a foot
in length, covered with a fine glaze,
were observed. We found what we
assumed to be penguin tracks, and the
skull of a crow well within the cave,
together with a skull and tracks of
the Brush-tailed Possum, and beetle
tracks were observed in the fine dust
on the floor of the cave. There were
no traces of human occupation, and
no Aboriginal artifacts have been
found, to the best of our knowledge,
anywhere in the Kent Group.

OF DOMESTICITY AND NOON-FLOWERS

Some random but perhaps interest-
ing observations from Erith Island are
worth recording briefly. Three members
of the party, living on a tent-site dis-
respectfully known as “Chinatown”,
shared many of their waking hours and
some of their sleeping hours with a
penguin family, over a period of five
weeks. This permitted a long and
very close period of observation of the
rearing of a pair of young penguins,
until they were forced to descend to the
sea for their first swim.

Despite the depredations of fisher-
men seeking crayfish bait from time to
time, Erith Island, with the other
islands of the Group, is a haven for
the Fairy Penguin. They enter tents,
dispute right of way on paths, fall into
rubbish pits, and in general enter
fully into the spirit of camp life. As
is well known, their holes or “nests”
may be barely above high-water mark
or hundreds of yards inland and hun-
dreds of feet above the sea. In this
case Chinatown occupies a flat plat-
form, perhaps fifteen feet by thirty
some twenty feet above high water
mark; actually, the site on which,
some ten years ago, Mr. Jack

Vict. Nat:i——Voke6

Part of Valley of the
Noon-flowers, Erith Island.
‘This spectacular valley at the
western end of Erith Island
has a floor many acres in
extent covered solely

with Mesembryantemum spp.

photo: S. Murray-Smith

Lierich built single-handed and launch-
ed a thirty-eight foot fishing boat, still
sailing Bass Strait waters as the Mir-
rabooka. (Mr. and Mrs. Lierich were
in residence on Erith Island for four
years. )

The pair of chicks were living in a
burrow directly behind a primitive
driftwood structure which the residents
of Chinatown described as their kit-
chen. They looked, with great owl-like
eyes and ruffle of brown and cream
juvenile plumage, to be twice as big as
the adult with them. All night long
the adult(s?) brought food to them
and the night echoed to the whistling
of the young and the squawks of the
adults. As the weeks went by and the
moult into adult plumage commenced,
the young became increasingly enter-
prising, and indeed bullying. They
would emerge from the burrow and
lie in wait for the cropful adult at the
top of the steep bank leading up to the
burrow. Then amidst frantic grunts,
whistles, squawks and screeches the
two young would fight for the right
to thrust their bills into the parent’s
gullet in search of fish. It rapidly be-
came clear as the moult progressed
that one of the pair was emerging as
the dominant and we watched this
factor develop as the adult plumage
appeared.

This plumage appeared first on the
leading edges of the flippers, then on
the tail, next on the back and then on
the belly, until near the end the ap-
pearance of this tatterdemalion pair

September, 1969

was utterly grotesque, the whole of the
head being covered in juvenile plumage
while the body and feet and leading

edge of flippers were adult. They
looked as though they were wearing
great helmets.

Finally, there was just a trace of
the juvenile plumage left on the top
of the head and on the back of the
flippers. Within a few more days even
this disappeared, and it was clear that
the night for swimming had arrived.
The whole process had taken nearly
five weeks. The night before we left,
they all disappeared to the sea—or so
we thought. But on packing up, under
one of the wooden cases we found,
quivering, the more timid one of the
pair, and careful observation showed
that it still had just a trace of juvenile
plumage. It was clear that it had been
deserted, but whether it was able to
take the plunge without encouragement
we shall never know. It was like seeing
a close acquaintance in the grip of
some nameless and irresolvable di-
lemma.

Our second observation relates to
an afternoon walk made by a number
of members of the party to the far
western end of Erith Island, previously
unvisited except in the previous year
by two teenage members of the group.
The walk across the Vale of Erith to
Wallibi Cove is straightforward, as the
island is grazed by cattle and their
paths make easy walking. From Wallibi
Cove a steep hill is climbed, only to
descend again the other side to a low-

265

lying neck of land which connects the
rugged outpost of West Point to the
rest of Erith Island. At this point we
were astonished and delighted to see
that almost the whole of this con-
necting piece of land, which must
measure some twenty acres in extent,
has an unbroken cover of Mesem-
bryanthemum. Several different species
are mingled together( probably a factor
here would be their relative tolerance
of salt spray, certain varieties pre-
dominating near the sea and others
further away from it), and the general
effect is that of a remarkable green
carpet. In bloom the sight must be
spectacular, but even as we saw it,
with a background of the big seas
rolling in from the west and crashing
in spray on the granite shoreline and
the offshore rocks, it remains one of the
memorable experiences of this island.
We have named this the Valley of the
‘ Noon-flowers.*

And it was in this quarter of Erith
Island, between Wallibi Cove and West
Point, that we observed a pair of Cape
Barren Geese which appear to have
taken this as their territory. So far as
we know this is the first record of Cape
Barren Geese on Erith Island, and may
be significant in the light of the ten-
tative evidence available, and men-
tioned earlier, that the geese are
colonizing or recolonizing some Bass
Strait islands to which they have been
strangers. We were particularly pleased
to see these great birds, not only be-
cause of their rarity, but because they
belong to these waters and without
their presence the islands seem to that
degree incomplete.

THE WEATHER AT ERITH ISLAND

We have often been interested in the
weather patterns of Erith Island. To
those accustomed to summers on the

* Mr. Geoffrey Hope has informed us that
a somewhat similar phenomenon is to be found
in the Hogan Group.

266

nearby Victorian mainland, for in-
stance, the differences are striking.
The most noticeable general difference ~
to the layman is that on Erith Island
(and the same no doubt would apply
to other small and isolated islands,
both in Bass Strait and elsewhere in
comparable latitudes) the daily tem-
perature range is small and the humi-
dity usually rather high. It takes some
time to dry clothes. and a wet sleeping
bag is a disaster! On the other hand
it is unusual to feel either particularly
hot or particularly cold. Another fea-
ture of the weather we have noticed
is that in the period we were there,
late December and January, halcyon
periods of beautiful sunny days al-
ternate, perhaps on a three or four
day cycle, with blustery and some-
times fierce windy weather—although
(and somewhat to our concern, for we
rely on a small tank for water sup-
plies) there is surprisingly little rain.
We have also noticed that the daily
maximum temperatures occur sur-
prisingly late in the afternoon. We
hold twenty-eight days’ records (see be-
low). On twenty-three of these days
a maximum “peak” is discernible. On
eight days it occurred between two
and four p.m., on nine days between
four and six, and on four days between
six and eight. Even allowing for our
Tasmania Summer Time (T.S.T.), one
hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time,
it would appear that the maximum is
reached on the average some two hours
later than on the mainland, and our
physicist friends find it hard to account
for the phenomenon.

The westerlies provide a dramatic
spectacle, for blowing over the island
and down the Vale of Erith they sweep
down and back over the cove on which
we camp, giving rise to remarkable
whirlwinds or “williwaws” in the bay.
It is quite a common sight to see six
or eight fishing boats and yachts each
lying on their chains at a different

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

angle, and on days like these the
yachtsmen among us claim it would
be possible to sail a circular course in
our bay on the one tack.

Living under canvas, as most of us
do, we naturally have a pronounced
interest in the weather. Three or four
days of high wind can make anyone
grumpy and out of soris. Thus we
were pleased to accede to the sugges-
tion of Dr. F. A. Berson, of the
CSIRO Division of Meteorological
Physics (Aspendale, Victoria), that we
take with us a self-recording thermo-
hygrograph and miniature Stevenson’s
screen, thus enabling us to make a
twenty-four hour record each day of
temperature and relative humidity.
Needless to say this bi-functional de-
vice was soon christened by us the
“hermaphrodite”. We are indebted to
Dr. Berson for the following analysis
of our meteorological records.

The midsummer weather in Bass
Strait, like that of south-eastern Aus-
tralia generally, is controlled by the
migratory barometric “highs” in mid-
dle latitudes. Unlike most places at
the mainland’s southern coast, Erith
island, owing to its maritime environ-
ment, is however spared the hot nor-
therly winds which at times even reach
down to Tasmania.

It may be of some interest to com-
pare the Erith temperature and humi-
dity with those at two selected stations,
Aspendale at the eastern shore of
Port Phillip Bay, about 130 nautical
miles to the north-west, and Pat’s River
on the west of Flinders Island, about
45 miles to the south-east.

For the period 30 December 1968

to 26 January 1969 the average re-
corded maximum temperature at Erith
Island was 71:7°F as against 79:°5°
at Aspendale and 73-2° at Pat’s River.
The minimum’ temperatures were
591°; 57°2° and’:55°1°, respectively:
The average daily temperature range
at Erith Island was thus 12:6°, com-
pared with 22:3° at Aspendale and
18-1° at Pat’s River, a good indication
of the island’s pleasantly maritime sum-
mer climate. With it goes, of course,
some increased relative humidity, e.g.
in the mentioned period the average
relative humidity at 9 a.m. (T.S.T.)
was 79 per cent., while at Aspendale
(9 am. E.S.T.), it was only 49 per
cent. and at Pat’s River (T.S.T.) 68
per cent. The corresponding average
temperatures at 9 a.m. were 63:5°,
68:9° and 67-:0°, while the average
wet-bulb temperatures were 58:7°,
59° 7 sand 61> Ly,

The highest recorded temperature at
Erith Island was 87° on 17 January,
when Aspendale had 100°, while at
Pat’s River it was also 87°. On 8
January, the day of the disastrous
Lara fires, Melbourne had 102°, and
even at Pat’s River the mercury climb-
ed to 97°. Unfortunately, the instru-
ment at Erith Island failed to properly
record the temperature during the
earlier part of the day, but the maxi-
mum temperature did not much ex-
ceed 85°. A timely cool change soon
after midday reduced the temperature
to a pleasant 71° by 3 p.m.*

* We wish to acknowledge the assistance of
the CSIRO Division of Meteorological Physics in
making available the recording apparatus and
the Division’s own records, and that of the
Bureau of Meteorology in allowing access to
the Flinders Island records.

APPENDIX I[

As before, we are most grateful to Mr. J. H. Willis, of the National Her-
barium, Melbourne, for the identification of the plants we brought back with us,

and for his unfailing encouragement.

We are not listing here all plants collected, but only those which are new

records.

September, 1969

267

New to Kent Group

Sand-hill Sword-sedge (Lepidosperma concavum), Dover Island, near sum-

mit.

? Manna Gum (Eucalyptus viminalis), Dover Island (if correctly deter-

mined).

Blown grass (Agrostis avenacea), Jane’s Cove, Erith Island.
Bryum campylothecium (moss), North East Island.

New to Erith Island

Nodding Club-rush (Scirpus cernuus), in Cave of Erith.
Sickle Fern (Pellaea falcata), under scrub, near West Cove.

New to Dover Island

Silver Banksia ( Banksia marginata), near summit.
Tree Broom-heath (Monotoca elliptica), near summit.
Tasmanian She-oak (Casuarina monilifera), near summit.

APPENDIX II

This comprises a list of Bryophytes and Fungi collected in 1967 and 1969.
The identifications are by Mr. J. H. Willis.

Erith Island

? Philonotis sp. (minute) (in cave); Sematophyllum homomallum; Weissia

controversa.
Dover Island

Campylopus bicolor; Sematophyllum homomallum (abundant); Lophocolea

semiteres (Hepaticae).
North East Island

Bryum campylothecium
Fungi from Dover Island

Phellinus robustus (on ? Melaleuca ericifolia);

Trametes cinnabarina.

APPENDIX III
These lichens of Dover Island, collected in January 1969, have been
identified by Mr. Rex Filson, of the National Herbarium, Melbourne.
Cladia aggregata—C. sullivanii (mixture); C. retipora; Cladonia sylvatica;
Anaptychia obscurata; Parmelia ferox; P. perlata; P. reticulata; Teloschistes
spinosus; Usnea sp. (aff. U. barbata); Ramalina fastigiata.

REFERENCES

1 Australian Conservation Foundation:
Newsletter, No. 6, January 1969, p. 4.
A useful general introduction to the
Group is A Field Guide to the Kent
Group Bass Strait, by J. H. and G. S.
Hope, Melbourne, 1968 (processed).

2J. H. Mullett and S. Murray-Smith:
“First Footing on a Bass Strait Island:
an Investigation of Dover Island in the
Kent Group”, Victorian Naturalist, Vol.
84, No. 8, pp. 239-250.

3 Australia’s Last Frontier—Bass Strait.
Australian Broadcasting Commission,
Sydney 1969.

4Victorian Naturalist, Vol. 7, No. 9, 7
January 1891, pp. 121-139.

°A. J. Campbell: Nests and Eggs of

268

Australian Birds (Sheffield, 1901), Vol.
II, p. 918.

6D. F. Dorward: “The Status of the
Cape Barren Goose Cereopsis Novae-
Hollandiae”, International Council for
Bird Preservation X Bulletin, 1967, pp.
56-71; Eric R. Guiler: “The Cape Bar-
ren Goose, Its Environment, Numbers
and Breeding”, Emu, Vol. 66, Part 3,
February 1967. pp. 211-235.

“Colin A. Garreau: “Excursion Holiday
in the Kent Group”, Victorian Natu-
ralist, Vol. 75, No. 86, December 1958,
pp. 128-30.

8A. H. E. Mattingley: “Birds of the
Hogans and other Islands in Bass
Straits”, Emu, Vol. XXXVIII, Part I,
1 July 1938, pp. 7-11.

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

Hyla nannotis
(Small-eared Tree Frog)

photo: Author

continued from p. 252

close to one of the many little water-
falls, they were hard to record effect-
ively. We caught six or seven more
individuals; some males and females
in amplexus in the shallow pools full
of the red and brown leaves were so
similar to them in shape and colour
that they gave themselves away only
by moving.

The dorsal colour is golden brown,
and the leaflike shape is accentuated
and outlined by the dark brown sides
of head and trunk, the two areas being
separated from snout to groin by a
narrow, cream-coloured ridge. The
back is smooth with two small warts
behind the eyes and three dark, warty
areas forming a triangle at the post-
erior end of the body. The legs have
dark brown crossbars.

This frog is confined to rain-forest
creeks in the mountains of North
Queensland.

David and I waded up and down-
stream and disturbed among the crev-
ices of the black rock some specimens
of a rather large, very dark and annoy-
ingly active Hyla species, with a short,
broad head and prominent eye-bulges.
We caught several, and the colour
changed later to an all-over pattern of
dark spots and patches on an olive
green background. These turned out
to be H. nannotis, the Small-eared Tree
Frog—the tympanum or eardrum is
either invisible, or very indistinct, as

September, 1969

it is, of course, in many other species,
but here the specific Latin name
records the fact.

We also caught a specimen of H.
eucnemis, the Green-eyed Tree Frog,
previously known as H. serrata because
of the clearly scalloped outer edges of
the feet and forearms. The frog was
very dark when caught, but later chan-
ged to an attractive patched pattern of
light brown and green. In most speci-
mens of this frog, parts of the iris of
the eye, and adjoining areas of skin,
are a vivid, light green. Specimens may
reach 70 mm in length.

Next week-end, Clyde Coleman of
the North Queensland Naturalists’
Club, organized an excursion to Spee-
wah, in the ranges northwest of Cairns,
and I joined the party. We drove in
two vans to the old pastoral property
of Mrs. Vievers, one of the pioneers
of the district. After enjoying her hos-
pitality at the homestead, we set off
along the stony creek where the edges
of rainforest and sclerophyll forest
merged.

At the creek, turned stones revealed
a number of small, stocky, extremely
active frogs, the most striking feature
being the colouring of the smooth,
shining ventral surfaces. In some in-
dividuals this comprised separate areas
of violet, light yellow and green, with
some orange or yellow mottling; the
ventral surfaces of thighs and legs were
orange with violet mottling. The

269

brightness and extent of the coloured
areas varied from frog to frog, some
being almost uncoloured. The dorsal
surfaces are mottled dark brown. A
light line runs from the tip of the
snout, curves over the eye and becomes
part of the general mottled area behind
it. The face is dark brown, the iris
mottled red.

The tips of the fingers and toes of
these frogs are expanded into pads.
However, they are not Hylids, but
members of the family Michrohylidae.
This family has over 50 species in New
Guinea, and six in Australia, all from
rain-forest in the eastern part of Cape
York Peninsula. The Speewah speci-
mens turned out to be Sphenophryne
pluvialis. They were all under 30 mm
long.

Further down the creek we found
members of another species of the
same family, an even smaller frog,
Cophixalus ornatus, between 20 and
25 mm long, with a smooth skin,
medium brown dorsal surface and un-
pigmented or mottled brown ventral
surfaces. A dark stripe runs behind the
eye for a short distance, then recom-
mences to run along the side. On the
back, posteriorly, is a pair of ocellate
spots, and anteriorly, a W-shaped pat-
tern on the shoulders. In this species
the short first finger lacks the expanded
tip, a

270

LEFT: Sphenophryne
pluvialis from Speewah.

BELOW: Cophixalus
ornatus (Note the ‘‘W”
pattern between shoulders,
and the oscellate spots
towards posterior.)

A metamorphosing individual of one
of the Mixophyes species was found at
the edge of the water, but it was too
young to be identified.

We found several more specimens
of H. eucnemis, the Green-eyed Tree
Frog, and these, like the one David
and I found, were very dark when
located, changing later to a map-like
pattern of green and brown, with the
iris brilliantly green in parts.

Several light brown medium-sized
frogs were found which puzzled me.
They had a distinct narrow ridge run-
ning along the sides from the snout
towards the posterior end, where it
broke up into separated raised warts.
The limbs were faintly cross-barred.
The tips of the fingers and toes appear-
ed to be expanded, but I could not

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

identify them as Hyla species, and
they were too large for Microhylidae.
Clyde Coleman had previously given
me a much larger specimen, and these
were presumably half-grown. The Aus-

The following list contains the species
hunting up the East Coast’.

tralian Museum later identified these
specimens as Rana daemeli, the only
Australian species of the Ranidae
family, which is better represented in
New Guinea.

mentioned in parts | and 2 of “Frog-

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September, 1969

_Kyarranus sphagnicola Mixophyes fasciolatus H. bicolor
K. loveridgei Crinia signifera H. peroni
Adelotus brevis C. parinsignifera H. verreauxi
Limnodynastes tasmaniensis Uperolia marmorata H. booroolongensis
L. peroni Pseudophryne bibroni — H. phyllochroa
L. dorsalis P. coriacea H. citropa
L. fletcheri Hyla aurea
QUEENSLAND
Hyla bicolor H. eucnemis Mixophyes fasciolatus
H. rubella Uperolia marmorata Taudactylus acutirostris
H. nasuta Limnodynastes peroni Sphenophryne pluvialis
H. rothi L. dorsalis Cophixalus ornatus
H. ? lesueuri L. tasmaniensis Rana daemeli
A. nannotis L. ornatus
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271

Field Naturalists Club of Victoria

F.N.C.V. General Meeting
Il August, 1969.

The President Mr. E. R. Allan was in
the chair and about one hundred mem-
bers were present. Mr. Allan announced
that Mr. Vic. Miller who is 94 years old
and our oldest member, had been hit by
a car. The good wishes of the members
were sent to him for a quick recovery
from his accident.

Minutes of the last meeting were taken
as read on the motion of Mr. Lewis and
Mr. B. Cooper.

Four new members whose names
appear in the August “Naturalist” were
elected on the motion of Mr. Swaby and
Miss J. Woollard. The President announ-
ced that Council had appointed Mr. J.
Strong to fill the vacancy of Vice-
President of the Club after the death of
Mr. McKellar.

He also announced that the “Natura-
list” will continue in its present form since
new arrangements are being made to
‘reduce the increase in printing costs by
approximately half.

The World Wild Life Foundation
Report 1965-7 was available at a cost of
$3.00. Members were reminded that this
fund needed support.

Conservation Organizations are holding
a meeting in the Melbourne Lower Town
Hall on Friday, 29 August to discuss
alienation of our Crown Lands.

He also reported that the Board of
Works is holding an investigation into
Landscape Conservation and Preserva-
tion. Members who know of special areas
to be considered should contact Mr.
Harris of the Board of Works.

Dr. M. Beadnell announced that an
Astronomical Society Meeting will be
held on 24 August. Miss J. Woollard
said that a recent “Current Affairs
Bulletin” dealt with Conservation. The
subject for the evening was “Seals of
Western Port” by Mr. R. N. Warneke. He
said that Seal Rock fur seal rookery was
one of four off the Victorian coast, the
most eastern being off Wingan Inlet,
another Rookery Island off Wilsons
Promontory and the most western being
Julia Percy Island. The Western Port
Seal Rocks are actually two islands with a
low basalt reef and a very limited area
for a boat to come in and only if seas
are not rough. He showed pictures con-
trasting the rough and calm conditions

Zaz.

and of the masses of seals on the pro-
tected areas of basalt. A comfortable self
contained dwelling is on the highest point
and there are two observation covered
centres overlooking the main rookery
areas. A flying fox is used to get in
safety to Black Rock from the hut. Mr.
Warneke has three assistants. Usually at
least two at a time are in residence, all the
time in the breeding season and one week
in four in winter. Breeding Bulls come
ashore in mid-October and take up
territories about 15 feet in area on the
basalt and defend that territory against
rivals. At the beginning the confrontation
is more ritual—barking at each other
from a distance. Later in the season
when mating is occurring there is a
stronger challenge, chest to chest pushing
and barking with heads up. Teeth can
inflict bites, the canine teeth being heavily
developed. They try to grab flippers with
teeth and they bury teeth in the skin of
the thick neck and try to turn the 620-700
Ibs of rival over. There is rarely a death
in a fight. They are heavily coated with
blubber for reserve as they don’t feed
between October and Christmas.

When a loser of a conflict leaves the
territory, other territory defenders attack
him and give him a bad time. Bachelors
congregate in a strip inland behind the
breeding strip in which a corridor is
left for non breeders to go to water.

Usually in the second week in Nov-
ember the first pup appears. There are
always females on the rock. Sea gulls do
good work in cleaning up membranes.
A week or ten days after the birth of a
pup the female is ready to mate and
seeks the male, some being very per-
sistent. The female fur seal is smaller than
the male being from 170-200 Ibs.

At the end of November the rookery
shows masses of wriggly black pups
congregated close together.

A two year old may still be a suckling
though usually this species of fur seal
nurses the young for one year. One in
last season was almost four years old
and still a suckling. Probably the mother
lost previous pups or the yearling may
have been so persistent and aggressive
pestering the mother and the new pup,
which may die.

There is a high mortality in the pups;
15% die by the end of the second month.
Twins are rare. There is a very strong
relationship between the pup and the

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

female who won’t accept another pup.
At first she nurses the pup for two days
before going to sea for food. The pups
mass together and when the female
returns to the one thousand or so pups
she finds hers by vocal recognition. Mr.
Warneke demonstrated on a tape recorder
the harsh noise of the female barking
and the smaller bleat of the pup who
leaps out of the mass and rushes up to
her and she sniffs and recognizes her
own.

The seals are sensitive to heat over
90°F. The fat insulates against the cold of
water but they suffer from heat and dip
their flippers in the foetid tide pools to
keep cool. They also lift flippers to catch
a breeze. They do not pant.

If a bull is not near a pool he must go
into the sea and returns late in the
afternoon.

The officers cannot handle the females
when they are attending the pups. They
try to mark as many bulls as possible
after drugging them with a gas gun
forcing a syringe with the drug into
them just behind the thick shoulder. The
weight of the animal and the suitable
amount of drug are considered. Then
they can be weighed correctly and exam-
ined extensively. The annual marking of
pups is important and every January after
breeding has ceased and the bulls gone,
three weeks are spent catching any pups
they can, taking vital statistics, tagging
on the flippers, and branding. The officers
examine small groups at a time, cooling
them with buckets of water. Each is
caught by hand, sex checked, body meas-
urements taken, and branded on shaved
skin patch with a cold iron brand at
—95° which causes less distress than a
hot iron. The cold destroys the cells
that make the pigment and when hair
grows there is a white patch in the shape
of the brand e.g. ‘O’ meaning January
1969. One picture showed a pup with a
collar. Some tag returns have been from
above the Darby River at Wilson’s Prom-
ontory to Cape Otway, from Burnie (Tas-
mania) and from Victor Harbour (S.A.).

In the first breeding season, of the
4-5000 seals ashore some showed nasty
wounds. It is thought that these are from
big sharks especially White Pointers
which have been caught—nine being
taken in the winter. One Shark had a
tagged seal inside. These sharks were up
to 142 feet long and weighed 1620 Ibs.

Information on the diet of seals can be
gained by examining undigested food
vomit which includes, Cuttlefish, Squid,

September, 1969

Octopus, Crayfish and fish ear bones. In
In addition to the clear slides illustrating
the talk Mr. Warneke brought a strong
skull of a seal bull and the skin of a
female fur seal.

The President thanked Mr. Warneke
for the interesting talk and members
showed their appreciation by acclamation
and their keen interest by asking many
questions. Answering a question on their
span of life Mr. Warneke said that bulls
may be 12 or 15 years old before being
able to gain breeding territory. Captives
are known to live 30 years but the aver-
age life would be much less.

The Secretary Mr. D. Lee mentioned
several books of interest to Naturalists.
These included Densey Clyne’s book on
Frogs $4.25.

Snowy Mountain Walks $1.50, a book
on Australian Desert Life, and others on
Bushwalking and Camping.

The Secretary brought to notice a book
received “Australian Fly Catchers” by
Brigadier Officer $5.06

Mr. D. McInnes appealed for helpers
for the Nature show and gave out leaflets
and posters advertising it. Barry Cooper
sold many “Save the Little Desert” car
stickers (2 cents).

Exhibits:

Mr. A. J. Swaby brought two Little
Desert plants—

1. Jumping Jack Wattle, Acacia enter-
ocarpa from near Kiata. The zig-zag
seed pod suggests the common name.

2. Spiny Wattle Acacia spinescens which
also extends to W.A.; usually there is
no sign of a leaf after the seedling
stage. This is easy to strike from the
seed.

He also brought flame pea, Chorizema
cordatum; woolly grevillia G. lanigera
(W.A. Vic. etc.) Pink spider flowers. G.
linearis in an unusual white form, a tall
shrub frequently in bloom. A _ dying
coast Wattle showed the production of
numerous buds.

Mr. J. Strong showed 2 molluscs—

1. Pictonerita ovalanensis, necklace shell
from Mangrove swamps near Cairns

— under the microscope these revealed
an infinite variety of patterns.

2. Scaly lined limpet Notoacmea _ scab-
rilivata from Tulum Western Port
showing colour and pattern variations.
Mr. D. McInnes showed fossil fresh

water ostracods from limestone of a

fossil lake from Coimadai where this

“water flea” like deposit is 7 inches thick.

aie

Mr. J. Sault brought several lichens
and demonstrated the spore forming
heads under the microscope.

Marine Biology and Entomology Group
4th August, 1969.

Mr. Condron chaired the meeting
which was attended by 14 members.

The secretary read a letter from
A. B. V. Channel 2 in answer to a request
for a repeat of their program “The
World About Us”. They regretted that
owing to restrictions of copyright, they
would be unable to comply with our
request.

As this was the last meeting before
the Nature Show discussion took place
about the Group’s exhibit. At the moment
there are some lighting difficulties which
we hope to resolve before the show
commences. Mr. Condron and Miss Forse
have offered to check in this respect. Mr.
Strong offered to assist Dr. Smith with
regard to a display of shells and other
marine specimens. Mr. McInnes showed
a plan of the show layout and explained
where different exhibits are to be placed.

It was announced that there would be
no meeting of this Group in September
as the night would fall on the first night
of the Show. The Secretary also an-
nounced that he and Mr. Strong would
be away for the October meeting. Mrs. Z.
Lee kindly offered to show some of her
nature slides on that night.

Dr. Brian Smith advised that the next
work-in at the Museum would be held on
16 August at 10.30 a.m. Members were
invited to participate.

Mr. R. Condron stated that the Ento-
mological Society was unable as adver-
tised to show films of the fruit fly and
sirex wasp at their last meeting. These are
now to be shown on Friday 22 August at
the Herbarium. Members of the F.N.C.V.
would be welcome.

Exhibits—

Miss Jenny Forse showed some larvae
of some species of moth; these fed on the

Fade

leaves of the Blue Gum. Also a nest of
sugar ants collected for display at the
Nature Show. Miss Forse gave a short
and very interesting talk on these.

Sepiidae species Arctosepia braggi,
(VERCO.), collected at Port Lincoln,
South Australia. Dr. Smith explained
that although the bones of this species
had been found, this was the first time
a live specimen had been taken. He went
on to say that 37 species of this family
had been described from Australian
waters, only 10 of which had been
described from the entire animal.

Miss White. showed two “saw flies”,
male and female and explained that the
female has a saw with which she pene-
trates the leaf. Although commonly called
a saw fly, Miss White said that actually
these were members of the Order
HYMENOPTERA, and _ were, therefore,
wasps. Also a katydid or long-horned
grasshopper, and a specimen of stick
insect,

Mr. McInnes showed a marine mussel
under a Club Microscope. Examination
of the growth on the shell revealed a
species of colonial verticella, probably
Epistylus, and also what looked like a
small species of Hydrozoa.

Mrs. Strong showed the case of a
ispecies of case moth Thyridopterix
herrichii, the ribbed case moth, family
Psychidae, taken at Mount Piper near
Broadford.

Mr. Ken Strong showed under the Club
Leitz Microscope, a slide which he had
made of a fairy fly. He described how he
had found it in some pond water, and
said that it was parasitic on may fly
larvae.

Mr. J. Strong showed under a Club
microscope, shells of “The Necklace
Nerite”, family NERITIDAE, species Picto-
neritina ovalanensis, collected by himself
and Mrs. Strong at Yule Point near
Cairns, North Queensland in 1962 taken
from a mangrove swamp. These were
shown to demonstrate the great variety
of colour and pattern in this species.

Vict. Nat.—Vol. 86

(cont. from page 253)

follows their previous high standard
of publication.

The small format of the book poses
difficulties for its layout and design. It
is composed of alternate pages of
printing, and complete pages of colour
photographs. This necessitates the cap-
tions for the illustrations being printed
on the same page as the text. The text
is arranged in two columns with
the captions sometimes commencing
below the first column, therefore re-
quiring the text to be continued on the
next page. In some cases, especially
where the captions are also continued,
this becomes quite confusing to the
reader.

The short Introduction briefly re-
lates how some of the plant families
were named in honour of early Austra-
lian explorer-botanists.

The book includes 32 families of
plants, with over 100 species illustrated
and many more described. It is ar-
ranged according to J. Hutchinson’s
The Families of Flowering Plants. The
authors have tried to present the main
groups of plants giving a geographical
coverage at the same time showing

“the scope and contradictions of Aus-
tralia’s flora’. Little known species as
well as popular garden varieties are
included.

Under each family an idea is given
of the distribution in Australia, and
mentions other countries where the
family occurs. The number of genera
and species in a family is noted, plus a
description of the plant such as
flowers and leaves, with any interest-
ing scientific values or notable features
it may have. Interesting facts concern-
ing the history of family names
accompanies some sections.

The book’s value is increased by the
comprehensive glossary of terms used
in the text, a good index to both text
and photographs with common and
botanical names listed, and a biblio-
graphy of 19 publications.

In order to illustrate lesser known
species, Australian Wildflowers in
Colour is useful to the botanist and
layman as a supplementary text. It is
excellent as an introductory book to
Keep alive a young person’s awakening
interest in Australian flora, and it
would make an ideal present for over-
seas visitors and friends.

Sue Filson

F.N.C.V. Publications Available for Purchase

FERNS OF VICTORIA AND TASMANIA, by N. A. Wakefield.
The 116 species known and described, and illustrated by line drawings, and

30 photographs. Price 75c.

VICTORIAN TOADSTOOLS AND MUSHROOMS, by J. H. Willis.

This describes 120 toadstool species and many other fungi. There are four
coloured plates and 31 other illustrations. New edition. Price 90c.

THE VEGETATION OF WYPERFELD NATIONAL PARK, by J. R. Garnet.

Coloured frontispiece, 23 half tone, 100 line drawings of plants and a map.
Price $1.50.

Address orders and inquiries to Sales Officer, F.N.C.V., National Herbarium,
South Yarra, Victoria.

Payments should include postage (9c on single copy).

September, 1969 DA

Field Naturalists Club of Victoria

Established 1880

OBJECTS: To stimulate interest in natural history and to preserve
and protect Australian fauna and flora.

Patron: His Excellency Major-General SiR ROHAN DELACOMBE, K.B.E., C.B., D.S.O.

Key Office-Bearers, 1968/69

President:
Mr. E. R. ALLAN

Vice-President: Mr. T. SAULT

Hon. Secretary: Mr. D. LEE, 15 Springvale Road, Springvale (546 7724).

Hon. Treasurer: Mr. D. E. McINNES, 129 Waverley Road, East Malvern 3145
(211 2427)

Hon. Editor: Mr. G. M. Warp, 54 St. James Road, Heidelberg 3084.

Hon. Librarian: Mr. P. KELLy, c/o National Herbarium, The Domain, South
Yarra 3141.

Hon. Excursion Secretary: Miss M. ALLENDER, 19 Hawthorn Avenue, Caulfield 3161.

Subscription Secretary: Mrs. N. E. Lewis, 1 Billing Street, Springvale 3171.
(546 4649).

Sales Officer: Mr. B. FUHRER, c/o National Herbarium, ‘The Domain, Sth. Yarra.

Group Secretaries :

Botany: Miss M. BuTCHART, 23 Loch Street, Hawthorn East 3123 (82 1616).
Geology: Mr. T. SAULT, 9 The Avenue, West Rosebud.

Microscopical: Mr. M. H. MEYER, 36 Milroy Street, East Brighton (96 3268).
Mammal Survey: Mr. P. Homan, 40 Howard Street, Reservoir 3073.

Entomology and Marine Biology: Mr. J. W. H. STRONG, Flat 11, “Palm Court’,
1160 Dandenong Rd., Murrumbeena 3163 (56 2271).

MEMBERSHIP

Membership of the F.N.C.V. is open to any person interested in natural
history. The Victorian Naturalist is distributed free to all members, the club’s
reference and lending library is available, and other activities are indicated in
reports set out in the several preceding pages of this magazine.

Rates of Subscriptions for 1969

Ordinary Members . . $7.00
Country Members .. $5.00
Joint Members $2.00
Junior Members... $2.00
Junior Members receiving. Vict. Nat. $4.00
Subscribers to Vict. Nat. a : $5.00
Affiliated Societies $7.00
Life Membership (reducing after 20 years) $140.00

The cost of individual copies of the Viet. Nat. will be 45 cents.

All subscriptions should be made payable to the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, and
posted to the Subscription Secretary.

Brown Prior Anderson Pty. Ltd. 5 Evans Street Burwood 3125

WN

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTI

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