130 THE GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



and set edge-wise on the stem, supply the place 

 of leaves in providing nourishment for the tree. 

 They have a most singular appearance. The 

 beautiful shrubby tribe of proteas, of which 

 there are six hundred and fifty known species, 

 abound in Australia, and nearly half of this 

 number grow in the latitude of 33 or 34. 

 The myrtle tribe abound here, with splendid 

 blossoms white, purple, yellow, and crimson. 

 Of one genus of this tribe, Eucalyptus^ or gum 

 tree, one hundred species, most of them large 

 trees, grow in this country, some two hundred 

 feet high, with straight trunks, rising to the 

 height of one hundred or one hundred and fifty 

 feet without branching, and resembling an 

 assemblage of elegant columns, so irregularly 

 placed as to intercept the view at the distance 

 of a few hundred yards. They are elegantly 

 crowned with branching tops of light willow- 

 like foliage. Some of what are called " stringy 

 bark gum trees," rise nearly as high as the 

 Monument without branching. 



A gigantic nettle, Urtica gigas, is a tree with 

 trunks eighteen, twenty, or even twenty-one 

 feet in circumference ; the leaves are heart- 

 shaped, and six inches across ; the sting is as 

 painful as that of a wasp. The Moreton Bay 

 chesnut, Catanospermum Australis, is a fine tree, 

 with a profusion of flame-coloured blossoms, and 

 leaves like those of the walnut. Doryanthes 

 excelsa, a splendid plant of the lily tribe, twenty- 

 four feet high, has brilliant crimson blossoms, 

 and stems as thick as a man's arm, which are 



