Collected along about a mile of river bank, sometimes in the forest, but mostly scrambling over the great rounded granite boulders edging the stream. Kept a lookout for platypus, said by locals to be in the river, but saw none. Only one rat in Van's traps. He hunted with a light late into the night and shot a very small rain-forest wallaby which seems to be new to the collection. Showed Van several rain-forest plants - Dracaena, Balularia, Musa, etc. - whose fruits are being eaten by mammals. Was visited in evening by Bates and Taylor. Lane hunted with Van for a couple of hours. Thursday March 18 A long morning in which Geoff and I followed Rex's Ck. from the power plant intake to the junction of this big creek with the Mossman. Hunting insects. Turned over logs and stones, dissected bird's-nest ferns, tore mats of ferns and other vegetation off rocks, and got little for our pains. About 200 yards above the town water supply intake we came to a beautiful open spot where the granite outcropped in a whale- back ridge practically bare of vegetation and exposed to the sun. The top of the ridge was not far above the [illegible] level of Rex's Creek, but on the downstream side it sloped smoothly and steeply to a small tribu- tary stream, about 30 feet below. Hunting dragonflies along the top of the whaleback, we noticed a strong sulphurous smell, and investigating, found it came from a spring which issued from a horizontal crack several feet wide on the smooth lower slope of the granite. The water of the spring was cool where it came from the rock in not much more than a strong trickle. The sulphur smell was strong, and there was a thin precipitation of whitish substance where the water came from the crack. I left Geoff collecting dragonflies and damsel flies at the foot of the whaleback, where the sulphur water trickled down the rock into a deep pool edged with bushes and bright green tussocks of a grass-like plant. Butterflies were plentiful too, apparently attracted by the sul- phur smell. Continuing down a rock-cluttered slope through the forest, parallel with the Rex, I turned over more rubbish and collected a few more in- sects. Probably I was getting careless, and trusting too much to the basketball shoes I was wearing. Anyhow, as I eased myself down a crev- ice between two big rocks my right foot slipped. A two ounce jar in my trousers pocket was broken into small fragments against the rock, cut- ting my thigh and giving me a nasty bruise. The cut of course was well disinfected with alcohol and the juices of crushed millipedes and crickets, and I daresay it will give no trouble. Before lunch we had our usual swim in a swirling emerald-green pool in the river. A delightful spot, complete with a clean sandy beach, and an imposing view up the gorge between richly vegetated banks to dark, cloud-toped mountains near the head of the river. Umbrella trees, grow- ing as epiphytes on mossy big trees along the river banks, were red with opening flowers. The finest of all the local damselflies, a big insect with pale blue body and half-black wings, kept out of reach on rocks in the stream. Another damselfly, so slender that it could only be seen when it moved, hovered about the tips of bushes like a wisp of glisten- ing cobweb.