AUSTRALIAN VEGETATION. 161 
miles, and which fairly may pass as the "Australian jungle," the 
vegetation assimilates more than elsewhere to extra- Australian types, 
especially to the impressive floral features of continental and insular 
India. Progressing from the Victorian promontories easterly, and 
thence northerly, we find that the eucalypts, which still preponderate 
in the forest of the southern ranges, gradually forsake us, and that in 
Eastern Gippsland commences the vast assemblage of varied trees, 
which so much charms by its variety of forms, and so keenly engages 
attention by the multiplicity of its interest. Bathed in vapour from 
innumerable springs or torrents, and sheltered under the dark foliage 
of trees very varied in form, a magnificent display of the fern-trees 
commences, for which further westerly we would seek in vain the cli- 
matic conditions. Even isolated sentries, as it were, of the fern-tree 
masses are scattered not further west than to the craters of extinct 
i colossal Todea-fems, 
with stems six to ten feet high, and occasionally as thick, emerge from 
the streamlets which meander through the deep ravines near Mount 
Lofty, on St. Vincent's Gulf, we miss there the stately palm-like grace 
of the CyathecB, Bicksonice, and Alwphila, which leave on the lover of 
nature, who beholds them, the remembrance of their inexpressible 
beauty. These fern-trees, often twenty to thirty, occasionally fifty to 
seventy feet high, and at least as many years old, if not older, admit 
readily of removal from their still mild and humid hauuts to places 
"lure, for decorative vegetation, we are able to produce the moisture 
and the shade necessary for their existence. Of all fern- trees of the 
globe, that species which predominates through the dark glens of 
Victoria, Tasmania, ami parts of New South Wales, the Dicksonia 
Antarctica (although not occurring in antarctic regions) is the most 
h «dy and the least susceptible to dry heat. This species, therefore, 
should be chosen for garden ornaments, or for being plun d into any 
Park glens ; and if it is considered that trees half a century old may 
with impunity be deprived of their foliage and sent away to distant 
countries as ordinary merchandise, it is also surprising that a plant so 
abundant has not yet become an article of more extended commerce. 
A multitude of smaller ferns, many of delicate forms, are harboured 
under the shade of the jungle-vegetation, amounting in their aggre- 
gate to about 1G0 species, to which number future researches in 
North-East Australia will undoubtedly add. The circular Asplemum 
