evening without uncovering our crates. Three small vessels - Cora, Yalata, and Lochiel - are scheduled to leave for Thursday Island between Tuesday and Thursday of next week. I have reserved cargo space on all of them (if we miss one we ought to be able to get the next), and I have bookings on the weekly planes leaving for T.I. next Wednesday and the Wednesday after. Had Mr. & Mrs. Stephens to dinner, and later, with them, visited a timber uses exhibition organized and privately financed by a voluble, aggressive enthusiast named Harry C. Whibley. Whibley knows timbers and their uses and has set out to stir in North Queenslanders an appreciation of the woods of their forests, and to campaign for better, less wasteful commercial utilization of the timbers. He is backed to some extent by the Harbor Board and the City Council, but the Chamber of Commerce and the timber interests are against him. During the war, Whibley was Timber Controller for the North, and made enemies among the sawmillers. Saturday, April 10 Unloading of the Time continued until noon, but our cargo has not been sighted yet. Busy on specimens. Having some trouble with my plant material through shortage of papers for drying. Sunday, April 11 Spent most of the day cataloging my plants from Mt. Bellenden-Ker. George out with George Brooks in afternoon and evening, bay-hunting on Freshwater Ck., near the inlet for the town water supply, and got two specimens. Van to Green Island to see his first coral reef. Geoff and I to Dupain's for cocktails. Had an interesting visitor as I worked on my plants in the museum this morning. Lew Arnold, an alert man of nearly 80, retired Firest Ranger, now employed by some logging firm as advisor. Arnold, like Whibley, is most critical of logging methods, and dirty politics in the northern timber industry. More than 50% of timber felled in the forests is wasted, and never comes to the sawmills. On the milling side, one company, through political influence, has the whole veneering industry cornered, they cannot nearly fill the demand with their plant, but they see to it that no one else erects a plant and they have succeeded in stopping the export of cabinet-wood stumps to the veneer mills of Britain and the U.S. Arnold has some original ideas. One is that the wood of forest lianas varies according to the species of tree the liana climbs on. One species of vine will have, variously, wood resembling cedar, rosewood, etc., according to the kind of tree on which it raises itself from the ground. A story in which he admitted there was a catch, was one of dancing trees. On Frenchman's Ck., south of Cairns, is an area of quaking ground on which palms and trees about 30 ft. high can be made to sway and lean in unison. Monday, April 12 Got off a second sending of 41 soil samples to Chas. Pfizer, and a package of 5 sargassums to Dr. Parr. Mammals and plants from Bellenden-Ker drying well. Attention to many details concerned with our move north. But our cargo has yet to come off the Time. We are going to be hard put to get it reorganized and shipped on one of the small vessels leaving within the next three days. It is about time our luck changed.