110 THE EUCALYPTS OF GIPPSLAND. 



The immediate valley was a series of grassy alluvial flats, through which the 

 river meandered. After some years of occupation, whole tracts of country hecame 

 covered with forests of young saplings of E. hemipliloia, pauciflora, viminalis, 

 amygdalina, and stellulata, and at the present time these have so much increased, and 

 grown so much, that it is difficult to ride over parts which one can see by the few 

 scattered old giants were at one time open grassy country. 



Within the last twenty-five years many parts of the Tambo valley, from Ensay up 

 to Tongio, have likewise become overgrown by a young forest, principally of E. 

 hemipliloia and macrorhyncha, which extend up the mountains on either side of the 

 valley. This dates especially from the time when the country was fenced into large 

 sheep paddocks, when it became very important that bush fires should be prevented 

 as a source of danger to the fences, and even when fire occurred the shortness of the 

 pasturage checked the spread. 



Similar observations may be made in the Omeo district, namely, that young forests 

 of various kinds of Eucalypts are growing where a quarter of a century ago the hills were 

 open and park like. In the mountains, from Mount Wellington to Castle Hill, in 

 which the sources of the Avon Eiver take their rise, the increase of the Eucalyptus 

 forests has been very marked. Since the settlement of the country, ranges, which 

 were then only covered by an open forest, are now grown up with saplings of E, 

 obliqua, E. sieberiana, and others, as well as dense growths of Acacia discolor, A. 

 verniciflua, and other arborescent shrubs. These mountains were, as a whole, 

 according to accounts given me by surviving aborigines, much more open than they 

 are now. 



In the upper valley of the Moroka River, which takes its rise at Mount 

 Wellington, I have noticed that the forests are encroaching very greatly upon such 

 open plains as occur in the valley. I observed one range, upon which stood scattered 

 gigantic trees of E. sieberiana, now all dead, while a forest of young trees of the same 

 species, all of the same approximate age, which may probably be twelve years, 

 growing so densely that it would not be easy to force a passage through on horseback. 

 Again, at the Caledonia Eiver, as at the Moroka, the ranges are in many parts quite 

 overgrown with forests not more than twenty years old. The valleys of the Wellington 

 and Macalister Rivers also afford most instructive exami:>les of the manner in which 

 the Eucalyptus forests have increased in the mountains of Gippsland since the country 

 was settled. The forest in these valleys, below 2000ft. above sea level, is principally 

 composed of Eucalyptus polyanthema, E. macrorhyncha, with occasional examples of 

 E. melliodora and E. stuartiana ; while E. viminalis occupies the river banks and moist 

 flats. I noticed here that E. melliodora and E. macrorhyncha formed dense forests 

 of young trees, apparently not more than twenty-five years old. In some places, 

 moreover, one could see that the original forest had been composed, on the lower. 



