xxvi.] BLUE GUM. 201 



THE BLUE GUM TREE (Eucalyptus globulus}* 



is found abundantly spread over a great part of Aus- 

 tralia and Van Diemen's Land. It is a tree of straight 

 growth, and attains a height of 200 to 300 feet, with a 

 diameter of from 6 to 25 feet. Like the Jarrah, it is 



* In reference to the Eucalyptus globulus, the following appeared in the 

 Ifomeivard Mail \n 1873 : 



"A DISEASE-DESTROYING TREE. M. Gimbert, who has been long 

 engaged in collecting evidence concerning the Australian tree, Eucalyptus 

 globtihis, the growth of which is surprisingly rapid, attaining, besides, 

 gigantic dimensions, has addressed an interesting communication to the 

 Academy of Sciences. This plant, it now appears, possesses an extra- 

 ordinary power of destroying miasmatic influence in fever-stricken districts. 

 It has the singular property of absorbing ten times its weight of water from 

 the soil, and of emitting antiseptic camphorous effluvia. When sown in 

 marshy ground it will dry it up in a very short time. The English were 

 the first to try it at the Cape, and within two or three years they com- 

 pletely changed the climatic condition of the unhealthy parts of the colony. 

 A few years later its plantation was undertaken on a large scale in various 

 parts of Algeria. At Pardock, twenty miles from Algiers, a farm, situated 

 on the banks of the Hamyze, was noted for its extremely pestilential air. 

 In the spring of 1867 about 1,300 of the Eucalyptus were planted there. In 

 July of the same year, at the time when the fever season used to set in, not a 

 single case occurred, yet the trees were not more than nine feet high. 

 Since then complete immunity from fever has been maintained. In the 

 neighbourhood of Constantine the farm of Ben Machydlin was equally in 

 bad repute. It was covered with marshes both in'winter and summer. In five 

 years the whole ground was dried up by 14,000 of these trees, and farmers 

 and children enjoy excellent health. At the factory of the Gue cle Con- 

 stantine, in three years a plantation of Eucalyptus has transformed twelve 

 acres of marshy soil into a magnificent park, whence fever has completely 

 disappeared. In the island of Cuba this and all other paludal diseases are 

 fast disappearing from all the unhealthy districts where this tree has been 

 introduced. A station-house at one of the ends of the railway viaduct in 

 the Department of the Var was so pestilential that the officials could not 

 be kept there longer than a year. Forty of these trees were planted, and 

 it is now as healthy as any other place on the line. We have no informa- 

 tion as to whether this beneficent tree will grow in other but hot climates. 

 We hope that experiments will be made to determine this point. It would 

 be a good thing to introduce it on the West Coast of Africa. " 



