138 THE VAST. 



gives light to the interior, and a door closes it, while 

 elegant ferns and lichens serve for hangings to the 

 walls.* 



But let us look at examples in which prodigious height 

 and immense bulk are united. The Macrocystis and the 

 ratan are enormously lengthened, but they are slender; 

 the baobab and the cypress are very thick, but they are 

 short. The colossal locust-trees of equinoctial America 

 are pre-eminent for vastness in both aspects. Von Mar- 

 tins has depicted a scene in a Brazilian forest, i* where 

 some trees of this kind occurred of such enormous dimen- 

 sions, that fifteen Indians with outstretched arms could 

 only just embrace one of them. At the bottom they were 

 eighty-four feet in circumference, and sixty feet where 

 the boles became cylindrical "They looked more like 

 living rocks than trees ; for it was only on the pinnacle of 

 their bare and naked bark that foliage could be discovered, 

 and that at such a distance from the eye that the forms 

 of the leaves could not be made out. 



The various species of gum-trees J of Australia and 

 Tasmania are prodigious examples of vegetable life, occa- 

 sionally attaining a height of two hundred and fifty feet, 

 with a proportionate thickness. The following statement 

 of Mr Backhouse will give the reader a vivid idea of 

 a Tasmanian forest. He is speaking of the stringy- 

 bark : § — 



* Ann, Soc. Agr., EocheUe, 1843. 



+ It is copied in Lindley's Vegetable Kingdom, p. 651. 



J They iona the genus Eucalyptus, § Eucal, robusta. 



