UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 155 



up. The coal mines and iron works in this 

 neighbourhood employ a great deal of shipping, 

 and the city of Gloucester is, besides, a place of 

 considerable business. 



As we boated along that part where the river 

 makes a sudden horseshoe bend, and skirts the 

 forest so beautifully, the woodland scenery natur- 

 ally became the subject of conversation ; and my 

 uncle, after smiling at some of my rhapsodies 

 about " the magnificent trees of Brazil," told us, 

 that a friend of his who has been in New South 

 Wales, had described the appearance of the 

 forests there, as very peculiar. From the scarcity 

 of deciduous trees, there is, he says, a tiresome 

 sameness in the woods ; the white cedar being 

 almost the only one that is not evergreen, in that 

 extensive country ; and besides, they have, in 

 general, a disagreeable grey or silvery appear- 

 ance. One of the most common trees there^ is 

 the eucalyptus, with white bark, and a scanty 

 foliage, which is more like bits of tin, than leaves ; 

 and no painter, he said, could make a picturesque 

 view of any scene there, because the trees have 

 no lateral boughs, and, therefore, cast no masses 

 of shade. He says, the Australian forests have 

 all a very peculiar character, owing to the manner 

 in which the two species that compose at least 

 one-half of the forests, turn their leaves to the 

 light. These trees are the acacia, and the euca- 

 lyptus ; their leaves hang edgeways from the 



