EUCALYPTUS TREES. 487 
grass would thrive on the heights of our snowy moun- 
tains. Perennial. 
Festuca purpurea, F. vy. Mueller. (Uralepis pur- 
purea, Nutt., Tricuspis purpurea, A. Gray. )—South- 
east coast of North America. <A tufty sand-grass, but 
annual. 
Festuca silvatica, Villars.—Middle and south Eu- 
rope. <A notable forest-grass. F. drymeia (Mert. and 
Koch), a grass with long, creeping roots, is closely 
allied. Both deserve here test-culture. 
Ficus columnaris, Moore and Mueller.—The Ban- 
yan-tree of Lord Howe’s Island, therefore extra-tropi- 
cal. One of the most magnificent productions in the 
whole empire of plants. Mr. Fitzgerald, a visitor to 
the island, remarks that the pendulous air-roots, when 
they touch the ground, gradually swell into columns 
of the same dimensions as the older ones, which 
already become converted into stems, so that it is not 
apparent which was the parent trunk; there may be 
a hundred stems to the tree on which the huge dome 
of dark evergreen foliage rests, but these stems are 
all alike, and thus it is impossible to say whence the 
tree comes or whither it goes. The allied fig-trees 
of continental East Australia have great buttresses, 
but only now and then a pendulous root, approaching 
in similarity the stems of Ficus columnaris. The 
Lord Howe’s Island fig-tree is more like F. macro- 
phylla than F. rubiginosa ; but F. columnaris is more 
rufous than either. In humid, warm, sheltered tracts 
of Victoria this grand vegetable living structure may 
be raised as an enormous bower for shade, and for 
scenic ornament. The nature of the sap, whether 
available for caoutchouc or other industrial material, 
requires yet to be tested. 
