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Jepson Field Book Transcriptions · Jepson Herbarium
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67_18 lay quiet, hours of breathless hot stillness - a sort of gasping heavy silver. My bed was placed in the open on a spot thick with dry grass near the most easterly Eucalyptus trees. It was perhaps one o'clock (the young moon had set) when a sharp intense explosion like a rifle shot awakened me. Instantly, without loss of time I got up and in the darkness moved my bed with some inconvenience, for well I knew what was the meaning of_ that sound. In periods of hot dry stillness large limbs suddenly give way, with an explosive report, in the crowns of Eucalyptus trees. in the morning __________________ _in |
67_19 the cause of last nights explosive noise was plainly visible. Lying on the ground by the roadway from the front gate to the cabin was a limb 12 feet long, a straight branch heavily plumed at top with numerous branchlets and very leafy. The whole thing weighed more than it was possible for me to lift. The break was a clean square break in sound wood! The straight limb or shaft came straight down, probably from one hundred feet up, its downward flight accelerated by the weight of the mass of foliage and branchlets. It made in the very hard dry ground a distinct hole. If striking a sleeping man, such a shaft would have peirced his body. - Sept. 15, 1942 |
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