THE WARMER TEMPERATE ZONE. 131 



are clothed with lofty timber ; some of the trees are a hun- 

 dred and eighty feet high and twenty- eight feet in circum- 

 ference, covering the ground with a dense forest.* Much 

 more might be told of the beauties of this favoured land, 

 with so fertile a soil and so delicious a climate. An English 

 eye, however, is sensible of one drawback ; and " thoroughly 

 to enjoy the luxuriant vegetation, it is necessary to forget 

 the rich arid varied verdure of our own forests ; for, luxu- 

 riant though it be, its prevailing tint is a dingy green." 



There is one little flower which must be particularly 

 named, because it seems to be to the Tasmanian settlers 

 what the Daisy is to us ; a kind of universal guest, though 

 " more especially growing on rocky, gravelly banks/' It 

 is an elegant white flower called Diplarrhena Mortea, which 

 blooms through all the spring and summer. Its three large 

 petals are snowy-white, the smaller inner ones delicately 

 tinted with yellow and lilac, and its great tussocks of long 

 reedy leaves flourish all the year round ; it belongs to the 

 Iris tribe, and is very much like that flower in appearance. 



One other English colony, New Zealand, still remains to 



* Iu Sir James Ross's Antarctic Voyages there is a very interesting ac- 

 count given of some wonderful fossil trees in the Derwent valley, which are 

 said to be some of the most perfect that have ever been found. 



