Apart from the wattle, the most striking note of colour in these softly-tinted forest masses is afforded by the sarsaparilla, which creeps up the young trees or low-growing scrub, and hangs them with a mantle of imperial purple. In general, however, the country regions round Melbourne are not rich in wild flowers. There is a bluebell, more like the Scotch harebell; a wild scabious, very similar to the English one; little yellow bachelor-button-like flowers; and an infinite number of tiny little blossoms, exquisite in themselves, but in no way comparing with a field of poppies, or coppices carpeted with the true bluebell, such as are seen at home. The woods and forests in Victoria are under the supervision of the Conservator of Forests, who has under him nine men on the office staff, and seventy-seven on the field staff, a meagre enough allowance, in all conscience, when one remembers the vast distances even in this, the smallest of all the States; and yet, more power to it, topping all the others in this matter, for in New South Wales the staff, including the Director, comprises only seventy-two persons; in South Australia, forty-four; in West Australia thirty; and in Queensland nine—Queensland! covering an area of 670,500 square miles as compared with Victoria’s 87,884, and holding, as it does, an untold mine of wealth in its vast forests. Queensland! the home of the red pine and the kauri-pine, the red cedar, the Moreton Bay pine, and black-bean; and nine men to guard the interests of all this wealth! The Pyrenees, which, with the Bald Hills, are a continuation of Mount Macedon, are really all a part of the great dividing range which enters Victoria at Forest Hill, and in which is included all the most important mountain peaks in the State; those mountains which are not actually part of the main range being mostly offshoots from it, while not only in Victoria is this the case, for Australia, in fact, is federated by her mountains more completely than she is ever likely to be by her people.