40 



At sawmills and splitters' establishments, the gathering of 

 seeds, particularly through the aid of children, might be car- 

 ried on most conveniently and most inexpensively, the sums 

 realised therefrom being clear gain. The same may be said of 

 collecting the abundant gum-resins of various eucalypts, which 

 for medicinal and technologic purposes are now in much 

 demand for export. Purchasers in the city offer about Is. per 

 Ib. The liquid very astringent exudations of the eucalypts 

 are also saleable. The precise quantity of tannic substance to 

 be obtained from saplings and foliage of various eucalypts, 

 acacias and casuarinae, remains yet unascertained; but it is 

 likely large enough, to base on their yield of tannic acid spe- 

 cial forest industries. 



For belts of shelter-plantations, again, no country in the 

 warm temperate or subtropic zone could choose trees of easier 

 growth, greater resistance, rapidity of increment, early and 

 copious seeding, contenteduess with poor soil, and yet valuable 

 wood for various purposes, than some of the Australian acacias 

 and casuarinas. They exceed much in quickness of growth the 

 coast shelter-pines of South Europe Pinus haleppensis and 

 Pinus pinaster; but are not all equally lasting. The trade in 

 seeds of this kind is also not unimportant, and the sources of 

 it are at least partly in our sylvan lands. 



Still another forest industry might be viewed as especially 

 Australian namely, the supply of fern-trees for commercial 

 exportation. Though about 150 different kinds of fern-trees 

 are now known, they are mostly children of tropical or sub- 

 tropical countries, and these again nearly all restricted to the 

 humid jungles or the shady valleys meandered by forest brooks. 

 Very few species of these noble plants extend to a zone so cool 

 as that of Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand. Again, 

 among this very limited number the stout and large Dicksonia 

 antarctica is not only one of the tallest of all the fern-trees of 

 the globe, but certainly also the most hardy, and the one 

 which best of all endures a transit through great distances. 

 Indeed, a fresh frondless stem, even if weighing nearly half a 

 ton, requires only to be placed without any packing in the 

 hold of a vessel as ordinary goods, to secure the safe arrival in 

 Europe,* the vitality being fully thus retained for several 

 months, particularly if the stem is occasionally moistened, and 

 kept free from the attacks of any animals. Through my un- 

 aided exertions these hardy fern-trees became, like many other 



* No fern-tree is indigenous to Europe. 



