Page:Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies.djvu/155

1833.] 1st mo. 1st. 1833. I measured a Tea Tree, Leptospermum lanigerum, 7 feet in circumference, and about 70 feet high. This is usually a shrub of about 10 feet in height. I afterwards met with one of these trees 80 feet high. A Silver Wattle, Acacia mollis? was 11 feet 2 inches round: the area of its branches and its height 60 feet. A Sasafras was 6 feet round and 140 feet high.—On a Myrtle, we met with a large fungus, such as is eaten by the natives in cases of extremity. It is known in the colony by the name of Punk, and is white and spongy; when dried it is commonly used instead of tinder. Another edible fungus grows upon the Myrtle, in these forests: it is produced in clusters, from swollen portions of the branches, and varies from the size of a marble to that of a walnut. When young, its colour is pale, and it is covered with a thin skin that is easily taken off. Its taste, in this state, is like cold cow-heel. When matured, the skin splits, and exhibits a net-work of a yellowish colour. It may be considered the best native esculent in V. D. Land.

A White Hawk, and some other birds of the Falcon tribe were observed here.—Among the few singing birds of this country there is one with a slender note, like that of a Red-breast; another has a protracted whistle, repeated at intervals.—The shrill chirp of the Mole-cricket has been heard during the two last days, and the harsh creaking note of a small Tetagonia ? a kind of fly, called the Croaker, is every where to be heard among the grass and bushes.

2nd. Showery with thunder. I dug up a Gastrodium sesamoides, a plant of the orchis tribe, which is brown, leafless, and 1½ feet high, with dingy, whitish, tubular flowers. It grows among decaying vegetable matter, and has a root like a series of kidney potatoes, terminating in a branched, thick mass of coral-like fibres. It is eaten by the Aborigines, and is sometimes called Native Potato; but the tubers are watery and insipid.

3rd. In company with J. Milligan and Henry Stephenson, a servant of the Company, from near Richmond in Yorkshire, we visited a place in the forest, remarkable for an assemblage of gigantic Stringy Barks, and not far from