TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



403 



view by the overarching fronds of the fern-trees, but betraying their presence by the won- 

 derful vividness and rank luxuriance of the masking vegetation. The stream, although 

 generally from sixty to a hundred feet wide, is rarely more than three or four feet dr. -p. 

 On its northern bank the ranges rise to a height of between two and three thousand 

 feet. Just below the point at which it effects a junction with Badger Creek the Yarra 



emerges into a level open country, and soon 

 afterwards receives the waters of the Watts. 

 These come down through a deep narrow 

 valley lying between Mount Juliet and the 

 Dividing Range ; but the sources of this 



THE LERDERBERG RIVER AT BACCHUS MARSH. 

 From a Sketch by Louis Buvelot. 



pure perennial stream have been only partially explored, owing to the steep and 

 rugged character of the mountains in this region, and the extraordinary density of 

 the undergrowth in the forests by which they are covered. The forests themselves 

 are remarkable as the habitat, among others, of the Eucalyptus amygdalina, originally 

 figured and described by Labillardiere. It reaches a greater altitude than any other 

 known tree upon the face of the globe. Baron von Mueller, the Government Botanist 

 for the colony of Victoria, whose " Eucalyptographia " promises to become a standard 

 authority on the subject, states that he himself has obtained approximate heights of 

 four hundred feet for this tree at the Black Spur, a few miles beyond Fernshaw, in 

 these ranges ; that measurements up to one hundred and ten feet were procured by Mr. 

 A. W. Howitt in Gippsland ; and that Mr. R. Boyle ascertained the length of a tree 

 of this kind which had fallen in the Dandenong Ranges to be four hundred and twenty 

 feet, or within thirty feet of the height of the Great Pyramid. Another measurement 

 showed that the length of the stem up to the ramification of the first branch, where it 

 had a diameter of four feet, was not less than two hundred and ninety-five feet. Some 

 of these giants of the forests have a circumference of one hundred and thirty feet close 

 to the ground ; and upon a square mile of land as many as a hundred trees have been 



