94 FOREST CULTURE AND 
self without an adequate and inexpensive material for 
his work? Annually, the timber of one hundred and 
fifty thousand acres is cut away in the United States 
to supply the want for railway-sleepers alone. The 
annual expenditure there in wood, for railway build- 
ings and ears, is £7,600,000. In a single year the lo- 
comotives of the United States consume £11,200,000 
of wood. The whole wood industries of the United 
States represent, now, an annual expenditure of one 
hundred million sterling. There, forty thousand arti- 
sans are engaged alone in woodwork. Here, in Vic- 
toria, notwithstanding the activity of many saw-mills, 
we imported, only last year, timber to the value of 
£270,572 for our own use. As these remarks may 
find publicity, I have appended further notes on tim- 
ber-trees, eminently desirable for massive introduc- 
tion, but do not wish to exhaust by details the pa- 
tience of this audience. 
But it would be vain to expect that Europe and 
America will continue forever to furnish for us their 
timber. The constantly-increasing population and the 
augmented requirements of advancing industries will 
render no longer yonder woods accessible also to us 
before the century passes, because even in those north- 
ern countries the timber supply will then barely sat- 
_isfy local wants. 
An idea may be formed of forest value when we 
enter on some calculations of the supply of timber or 
other products available from one of our largest Eu- 
calyptus-trees. Suppose one of the colossal Eucalyp- 
tus amygdalina at the Black Spur was felled, and its 
total height ascertained to be four hundred and eighty 
feet, its circumference toward the base of the stem 
