Se P 1 -.' "I Hardy, The Forests of Victoria. 69 



THE FORESTS OF VICTORIA. 



Part 1. 



By A. D. Hardy, F.L.S. 



(Read befoyc the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, 10th May, 1915.) 



I. — Historical Reference. 

 Before proceeding to discuss the existing forests, let us briefly 

 review the history of Victoria in so far as it bears on our 

 present subject. Although the geographical history of this 

 part of Australia may be said to have begun after coastal 

 voyages by Commander Grant and by Dr. Bass, and the 

 discovery of Port Phillip Bay by Lieut. Murray in 1801, an 

 increase of population such as promised exploitation of the 

 natural resources of the new land did not begin until the 

 discovery of gold, in 1851. With this increase there grew a 

 demand for timber for dwellings to replace the " canvas town " 

 settlements of Ballarat, Bendigo, &c, and a further demand 

 for the construction of fences, culverts, bridges, jetties, 

 wharves, and telegraph lines — a demand that persisted and 

 increased. The earlier settlers destroyed valuable timber much 

 in excess of their actual requirements for direct economic use ; 

 but, however deplorable that fact may be, it is none the less 

 true that much of the wholesale slaughter was inevitable, and 

 even necessary if the pioneers were to successfully combat the 

 allied forces of nature, and master the wilderness. 



At the outset they had the materials for their primitive 

 dwellings ready to hand. Arboreous vegetation there was of 

 a sort, but of poor timber value, the dearth ef timber trees 

 being a recurring note in the diaries of the surveyors of Port 

 Phillip Bay and environment of the new settlement. For their 

 " wattle- and-daub " huts there was an abundance of lithe, 

 tough stems and branches of acacias and other shrubs* — 

 Acacia pyenantha on the higher Silurian and its sandy, gravelly 

 capping, which bore also much .1. mollissima ; and along the 

 streams grew .1. dealbata, of which hardly a representative 

 vestige remains close to Melbourne. These were in those 

 days known better as Mimosa (whence the corruption 



Prickly Moses" for .1. verticittata). The Red Stringy^bark 

 Gum, Eucalyptus macrorrhyncha, furnished the slabs of bark 

 which roofed and walled and even chimneyed their bark huts. 

 a type oi dwelling which persists in wayback parts remote 

 from railways and wheel-tracks. In [853 the Castlemaine 

 Mechanics' Institute was in a bark hut. For their post and 



* " Wattle"' is not a term oi Austral origin, and applies to any flexible 

 stems or twigs capable oi being woven or Laced together, as in the mud 

 bouses ot Anglo-Saxons, Wesi Africans, and others; and many acaci 

 bet ause of this early use, have been called wattle. 



