498 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
or refreshment to the traveller, I made an excursion to the 
centre of the Island in the month of October, 1840. Mr. 
Thompson of Marlborough kindly accompanied me to a 
small forest of these trees, which occupied several square 
miles of flat table land, intersected with marshes, at an ele- 
vation of 4,000 feet above the sea, and not far from Lake 
Echo. Few other species grew amongst it, nor did the trees 
grow very close together, there was always space enough to 
ride between them, there being no brushwood under their 
shade. T'heindividual trees are well described by Mr. Gunn; 
and their uniformity in height, and the smoothness of the 
grassy or boggy land between, gave to the whole wood some- 
thing of the appearance of an orchard, and quite unlike any 
other forest scenery that I had witnessed in the colony or 
elsewhere. The whole scene was dreary and desolate in the 
extreme, from the lurid colour of their foliage, the want of 
some striking object either of rock or tree, and of any of the 
animal kingdom except the solitary snipe, kangaroo, or black 
swan. Inone respect, however, this forest was an improve- 
ment upon the more gigantic vegetation through which we 
had ridden in ascending to the table-land: for the severe 
frost, mentioned by Mr. Gunn, had killed all the other and 
larger species of Eucalyptus, especially on the flat grounds, 
similar to, but at a lower elevation than those on which we 
were. For many miles on the road to the lakes, our course 
had been amongst the tall trunks of dead Gum trees, from 
eighty to a hundred and thirty feet high, most of their trunks 
blackened on one side by the fires which the natives had at 
various remote periods kindled in the forests, the charred 
portions forming a curious contrast to the whiter si 
whence the bark had flaked off. On the banks of Lake 
Echo, a beautiful sheet of water, a similar death-like scene 
met the eye. Gum trees, Leptosperma, Hakeas, = 
Banksias, all seemed as if they had been suddenly struck 
with some mortal disease in the full vigour of their y 
and in their prime of life. One huge Eucalyptus, stretching iS — 
sound but bleached and leafless arms over the lake, appeareo — 
