EUCALYPTUS TREES. 41 
readily manifest. The accurate Customs returns for 
the last year show an importation of foreign woods to 
the value of £223,769 ; there was scarcely any export. 
This very month the imported building-wood sent to 
Sandhurst alone has cost £58,000. Some countries 
have not been altogether unmindful of the conserva- 
tion of their forests. Germany, already much devas- 
tated at the time of the Romans, received its first for- 
est laws as far back as the reign of Charlemagne — 
indeed, with the commencement of agriculture and 
the settling of the nomadic hunter on fixed habita- 
tions. The forests thus discontinued to be common 
property, and in the fourteenth century commenced 
already a forest economy. Full legislation, regular 
management and actual cultivation of trees on an 
extensive scale, date back one hundred and fifty 
years. Venice formed its forest laws already in the 
fifteenth century. Although the desire for ample 
hunting-territory gave a great impulse to the restric- 
tions placed on the encroachment of the Middle Eu- 
ropean forests, this at the same time sayed them to 
the country. 
Within the operations of wood culture may also be 
included that of subduing drift-sand; and solidifying 
the latter finally by plantations. For this purpose can 
be chosen the Haleppo Pine, Cluster Pine, Scotch Fir, 
or our own less arboreous so-called seashore Tea-trees 
(Melaleuca parviflora and Leptospermum levigatum), 
further the drooping She-oak (Casuarina quadrivalvis), 
the coast Honeysuckle (Banksia integrifolia), and also 
our desert cypress, or so-called Murray Pine. As not 
only in close vicinity to our fine city one wilderness 
of shifting sand exists, but as also in other places of 
4 
