| Australia is yet too young a country to have many | | | | Bushland ghost-voices are caused by the wind blowing |
| historical ghosts, except maybe those of bushrangers. | | | | on the unique, juvenile leaves. These leaves, circular in |
| She has had no Loch Ness monster, the nearest being | | | | shape, grow opposite each other in pairs, but fuse to |
| a mythical animal called the "bunyip," created to solve | | | | form a complete disc. |
| the mystery of an unusual track found in an area of | | | | They are a plant curiosity because, instead of growing |
| country shunned by domestic animals. Nevertheless | | | | out of the stem, they grow around it. A stem may |
| Australia has her own "haunted woodlands," where | | | | have an indefinite number of paired leaves, and looks |
| thousands of tiny voices whistle, whine and whisper, | | | | for all the world like a skewer run through a handful of |
| although there may not be a human being within miles. | | | | uncooked potato chips. When the juvenile leaves die |
| They are the voices of Australia's forest-ghosts. | | | | and dry, they become loose and develop a curl, which |
| The "ghost" has proved to be a botanists' delight, | | | | catches the wind. In the lightest breeze they spin |
| Eucalyptus perriniana, a tree better known as the | | | | around the stem, making an eerie whine not unlike an |
| "Spinning-top" or "Round-leaf Snow Gum." This dwarf | | | | aboriginal "bullroarer," or, when they rub against leaves |
| gum-tree with its strange leaves, some discs, some | | | | still firmly attached, they create a modulated whistling |
| linear, and its smooth, blotched, white bark, is something | | | | noise. The mature leaves, a secondary and more |
| of a freak even among Australia's 365 varieties of | | | | permanent leaf-growth, are, like those of any other |
| strange eucalypts. It is not widely known, even among | | | | eucalypti long, thin and tapering, and this botanical |
| Australians, because it grows only in certain | | | | peculiarity has given rise to other tales. |
| mountainous areas of southern Australia, and is really | | | | The most popular is that the spinning-gum quickly turns |
| quite insignificant among some of its big brothers of | | | | to an ordinary blue gum if taken away from its natural |
| the mountains. | | | | "haunted" habitat. Many, however, have been |
| A large Eucalyptus perriniana would be only fifteen to | | | | transplanted to Hobart, Australia's southernmost capital, |
| twenty feet in height compared with the 300-odd feet | | | | and this story has been shown to be false under |
| of some of its neighbors. Its trunk, of course, is too | | | | observation. |
| small and pale to attract commercial attention. | | | | |
