a bright yellow colour, with some black marks, made
their paper nests on the stems of trees, or suspended them from the dry
branches; most of us were several times severely stung by them. When
found near our encampment we generally destroyed them, by quickly raising
a large fire with dry grass.
A species of Gristes was abundant in the water-holes, but it was of small
size: the eels have disappeared.
Nov. 25.--We travelled about eight miles, north by west, ascending a
spur, from which the waters flowed, both to the south-west and to the
eastward, but both collecting in Robinson's Creek. Every time we turned
to the westward we came on tremendous gullies, with almost perpendicular
walls, whereas the easterly waters formed shallow valleys of a gently
sloping character. The range was openly timbered with white-gum,
spotted-gum, Ironbark, rusty-gum, and the cypress-pine near the gullies;
and with a little dioecious tree belonging to the Euphorbiaceae, which I
first met with at the Severn River, and which was known amongst us under
the name of the "Severn Tree:" it had a yellow or red three-capsular
fruit, with a thin fleshy pericarp, of an exceedingly bitter taste; the
capsules were one-seeded. The gullies were full of bush-trees, amongst
which the Bottle-tree, and the Corypha-palm were frequent. Pomaderris and
Flindersia were in fruit and blossom. According to Mr. Gilbert, rock
wallabies were very numerous. On a RECONNOISSANCE I traversed the
continuation of the range, which I found to be of a flat, sandy, and
rotten character, having, with the exception of the Blackbutt, all the
trees and other characteristics of the sandstone country of Moreton Bay:
Xylomelum, Xanthorrhaea, Zamia, Leptospermum, a new species of forest
oak, which deserves the name of Casuarina VILLOSA, for its bark looks
quite villous; Persoonia falcata, R. Br., a small tree about fifteen feet
high, with stiff glaucous falcate leaves, and racemose inflorescence; a
dwarf Persoonia, with linear leaves, the stringy-bark, and a species of
Melaleuca along the creek. In my excursion I crossed the main branch of
Robinson's Creek, and found the gullies of its right bank as steep and
tremendous as those of the left. Water was very scarce. The whole country
is composed of a fine-grained sandstone.
As the water-holes on the range are very few and distant from each other,
they are frequented by the bronze-winged pigeons in great numbers. Mr.
Gilbert shot eight of
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