This morning Van was driven by Barry to the Iron Range air-drome to collect for a couple of days. The vegetation is different there - mainly messmate savanna-forest ridges, and a couple of nights trapping and jacking might discover differences in the mammal fauna. Geoff went along to collect insects and reptiles. They are staying with Leo Ferris, the groundsman, who last week told me a long story about a jumping mouse which he chased across the flat near his shack. Most people we talk to tell of strange creatures, usually extra small or extra large, that they have seen in the bush. One never knows how true these tales may be, so, whenever we can, we follow them up. Wed., June 23 : A strong southeaster has sprung up again and the sky is overcast and threatening rain. These dull days add to the difficulty of plant collecting in the rainforests. This morning about 9 o'clock when I thought of photographing the huge serpentine buttress roots of a fig tree I got a Weston light meter reading of .8. For 4½ hours of work in the floodplain rainforests this AM I got but 5 species of plants. For tall rainforest, these are the poorest I have seen for undergrowth plants. Usually when botanizing in rainforest, tracking fruiting and flowering trees and canopy lianas by fallen flowers and fruits, and by the moise of feeding birds and the buzzing of insects away v. top, one comes across undergrowth shrubs and flowering herbs which by their color relieve the gloom of the forest, and help to fill the bag. Most of the very few herbaceous undergrowth plants of the Iron Range forests grow in lighted edges where rainforest joins savanna-forest. The banks of streams, when they lie open to the light in rainforest, are usually prolific in small plants. Not so here. I have not found a single streamside plant on the silty, pig-rooted banks of the Claudie. Geoff back from the air-drome with the mail this evening, with numerous insects and small lizards. Van got nothing new in traps last night, but he has collected two echidnas and is not on the trail of the jumping mouse. Thursday, June 24: Van returned this morning by Pinwell's jeep without the jumping rat of the air-drome area but with the third specimen of Rhinolophus [illegible] to be collected in Australia, three echidnas, and sundry rats and the two small marsupials of this locality. One of the echidnas was found hopelessly entangled in a camouflage net left by the armed forces. A good lot of plants taken from the rainforests of the first gully to the south, including a very large Pandanus (1309) recalling P. novbelluensis of the Fly River region, a monoecious Melanophora (19328) which seems different from the sp. collected on Dirtywater Crk., the crinkled "Golden Orchid" (Penarobium undulatum) and the 7th sp. of palm ((19310) for this camp. The strong, gusty SE wind, and overcast weather are with us again; but so far no rain. Friday, June 25: What will probably be my last day in the field here yielded no plant of special note, although, despairing of finding fertile specimens of a magnificent Treycinetia which grows in the moist ravines, I took sterile material of it (19326). Several 4 x 5 photos made in the rainforest ravine where the big Treycinetia, exceedingly tall Glubia palms, and many strange pandan trees grow in swampy bottoms. A nice shipment of four boxes of zoological material and 4 cartons of dried plants despatched by Barry Fisher to Portland Roads to go to Cairns on the "Pandana" due to return south about the end of next week.