EUCAL YPTUS. 85 



Many of our animals inhabiting the desert or waterless 

 plains near these have no known means of obtaining water 

 for long seasons. Sheep on green pasture are not usually 

 watered, I am informed. I recollect the surprise I felt 

 years ago in observing the small amount of water used by 

 the Bedouins of the Libyan desert when travelling. It 

 would seem from this that some of the animals and even 

 some men can do well on a very small amount of fluid. 



Many dreadful deaths have happened from thirst on tbe 

 burning Colorado desert. Probably very few of these would 

 have occurred had the travellers known all of the resources 

 about them. 



The death of all the members of an emigrant train to- 

 gether with all of their animals from thirst, in the Desert 

 of Death Valley, took place on a part of that arid waste 

 where water was only eight, feet below the surface of the 

 soil. A few strokes of the shovel would have saved the 

 whole party. 



The seeds of microtheca are small. While some of the 

 gums have good sized fruits like the large-leaved, wing- 

 seeded Foelsheana, of Port Darwin, or like calophylla, (the 

 kino-charged guarantor of health, not assainitor but 

 judicious selector of healthy sites,) the Eucalyptus as a rule 

 has small seeds. Small or dwarf species are the usual har- 

 bors of exception, but the giants of the genus, like the 

 Karri, regnans, globulus, viminalis, etc., all have small 

 seeds. So with us the giant sequoias have minute seeds, 

 while the Pinus coulteri, the pinon, the Torrey pine, the 

 mesquit and our oaks have large generally edible seeds. I 

 krtow of no Eucalyptus seed that is edible, though some 

 of the larger ones may be. 



I have found so many of our arborescent species, whose 



