

IN EXTRA-TROPICAL COUNTRIES. 119 



Eucalyptus eugenioides, Sieber. 



One of the Stringybark-trees of Victoria and New South Wales. 

 The tree is abundant in some localities, and attains considerable 

 dimensions. Its useful fissile wood is employed for fencing and 

 building purposes. Systematically the species is closely allied to 

 E. piperita. 



Eucalyptus ficifolia, F. v. Mueller.* 



South-West Australia. Although not a tree of large dimensions, 

 this splendid species should be mentioned for the sake of its magni- 

 ficent trusses of crimson flowers, irrespective of its claims as a. 

 shady heat-resisting avenue tree. It bears a close resemblance to 

 E. calophylla. 



Eucalyptus Globulus, Labillardiere.* 



Blue Gum-tree of Victoria and Tasmania. The tree is of extremely 

 rapid growth, and attains a height of 350 feet, furnishing a first- 

 class wood; shipbuilders get keels of this timber 120 feet long ; 

 besides this, they use it extensively for planking and many other 

 parts of the ship, and it is considered to be in some respects superior 

 to American White Oak. Experiments on the strength of various 

 woods, instituted under my direction by Mr. Luchmann, proved 

 Blue-Gum in average of eleven tests to be about equal to the best 

 English Oak, American White-Oak and American Ash. The 

 best samples indeed carried as great a weight as Hickory in trans- 

 verse strain, and also about equal to that of Eucalyptus rostata, 

 superior to that of E. macrorrhymla, E. Gunni, E. Stuartiana and 

 E. goniocalyx, but not quite up to the strength of E. melliodora, E. 

 polyanthema, E. siderophloia and E. Leucoxylon. Blue-Gum wood, 

 besides for ship-building is very extensively used by carpenters for 

 all kinds of out-door work, joists and studs of wooden houses, also 

 for fence-rails, telegraph-poles, railway-sleepers lasting nine years 

 or more for shafts and spokes of drays, and a variety of other 

 purposes. E. globulus is hardier than Orange and Lemon plants. 

 In South Europe it has withstood a temperature of 19 F., but 

 succumbed at 17 ; it perished from frost at the Black Sea and in 

 Turkestan, according to Dr. Regel. The sirocco however does not- 

 destroy it. Regarding the celerity of its growth, Mr. Thomson men- 

 tions that it attains 60 feet in seven years in Jamaica on the hills ; 

 in California it grow 60 feet in eleven years, in Florida 40 feet in four 

 years, attaining a stem of 1 foot in diameter. In some parts of 

 India its growth has been even more rapid ; at the Nilgiri Hills it 

 has been reared advantageously, where E. marginata. E. obliqua, E. 

 robusta and E. calophylla had failed. Its growth was there found 

 to be four times as fast as that of Teak, and the wood proved for many 

 purposes as valuable ; trees attained a height of 30 feet in four years, 



