EUCALYPTUS TREES, 113 
Osiers and other willows used for basket-work, for 
charcoal, or for the preparation of salicine, might line 
any river banks, quite as much for the sake of shade 
and consolidation of the soil as for their direct utili- 
tarian properties. In the forest ranges any dense line 
of Willows and Poplars will help to check the spread 
of the dreadful conflagrations in which so much of the 
best timber is lost, and through which the tempera- 
ture of the country is for days heightened to an intol- 
erable degree far beyond the scenes of devastation, 
while injuries are inflicted far and wide to the labors 
in the garden or the field. In the most arid deserts 
the medicinal Aloes might readily be established, 
to yield bya simple process the drug of commerce. 
Gourds of half a hundred weight have been obtained 
in Victoria, and show what the plants of the Melon 
tribe might do here, like in South Africa, for eligible 
spots in the desert land. Among the trees for those 
arid tracts, the glorious Grevillea robusta, with its in- 
numerable trusses of fiery red, and its splendid wood 
for staves, is only one of the very many desirable ; 
just as in the oases the Carob-tree will live without 
water, uninjured, because its deeply-penetrating roots 
render it fit toresist any drought. Butit may besaid 
that much that I instance is well known and well 
recorded—so, doubtless, it is, in the abstract—but va- 
riety requires to be distinguished from variety, spe- 
cies from species, and their geography, internal struc- 
ture and components need carefully to be set forth, 
before any industry relating to plants can be raised 
on sound ground in proper localities, and be brought 
to its best fruitfulness, ; 
Even a pond, a streamlet — how, with intelligent 
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