204 AUSTRALIAN VEGETATION. 
lio-htful dens of the Warren Eiver of Western Australia, where it rises 
to approximately 400 feet high. Into the hollow trunk of this Karri 
three riders, with an additional packhorse, could enter and turn in it 
without dismounting. On the desire of the writer of these pages, Mr. 
D. Boyle measured a fallen tree of Eucalyptus amygdalina, in the deep 
recesses of Dandenong, and obtained for it the length of 420 feet, with 
proportions of width, indicated in a design of a monumental structure 
placed in the Exhibition ; while Mr. G. Klein took the measurement 
of a Eucalyptus on the Black Spur, ten miles distant from Healesville, 
480 feet high ! Mr. E. B. Heyne obtained at Dandenong as measure- 
ments of heights of a tree of Eucalyptus amygdalina : — Length of stem 
from the base to the first branch, 295 feet ; diameter of the stem at 
the first branch, 4 feet ; length of stem from first branch to where its 
top portion was broken off, 70 feet ; diameter of the stem where broken 
off, 3 feet ; total length of stem up to place of fracture, 365 feet ; 
girth of stem three feet from the surface, 41 feet. A still thicker tree 
measured three feet from the base, 53 feet in circumference. Mr. George 
W. Robinson ascertained in the back-ranges of Berwick the circum- 
ference of a tree of Eucalyptus amygdalina to be 81 feet at a distance 
of four feet from the ground, and supposes this eucalypt, towards the 
sources of the Yarra and Latrobe rivers, to attain a height of half a 
thousand feet. The same gentleman found Fagus Cunninghami to gain 
a height of 200 feet and a circumference of 23 feet. 
It is not at all likely that in these isolated inquiries chance has led 
to the really highest trees, which the most secluded and the least ac- 
cessible spots may still conceal. It seems, however, almost beyond 
dispute, that the trees of Australia rival in length, though evidently 
not in thickness, even the renowned forest-giants of California, Sequoia 
Wdlingtonia, the highest of which, as far as the writer is aware, rise 
in their favourite haunts at the Sierra Nevada to about 450 feet. Still, 
one of the mammoth-trees measured, it is said, at an estimated height 
of 300 feet, to have shown yet 18 feet in diameter! Thus to Vic- 
torian trees for elevation the palm must apparently be conceded. A 
standard of comparison we possess in the spire of the Minster o 
Strassburg, the highest of any cathedral of the globe, which sends 
its lofty spire to the height of 466 feet, or in the great pyramid of 
Cheops, 480 feet high, which if raised in our ranges would be over- 
shadowed probably by Eucalyptus- trees. 
