

THE VAST. 



are very thick, but they are short. The colossal 

 locust-trees of equinoctial America are pre-eminent 

 for vastness in both aspects. Von Martius has 

 depicted a scene in a Brazilian forest,* where some 

 trees of this kind occurred of such enormous di- 

 mensions, 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-treest of Australia 

 and Tasmania are prodigious examples of vege- 

 table life, occasionally attaining a height of two 

 hundred and fifty feet, with a proportionate 

 thickness. The following statement of Mr. Back- 

 house will give the reader a vivid idea of a Tas- 

 manian forest. He is speaking of the stringy- 

 bark :— ■% 



"Some of the specimens exceed two hundred feet, 

 rising almost to the height of the monument in 

 London before branching; their trunks also will 

 bear comparison with that stately column, both 

 for circumference and straightness. One of them 

 was found to measure fifty-five feet and a half 

 round its trunk at five feet from the ground; its 

 height was computed at two hundred and fifty 

 feet, and its circumference was seventy feet at the 

 base ! My companions spoke to one another, and 

 called to me when on the opposite side of the tree, 

 and their voices sounded so distant that I con- 



* It is copied in Lindley's " Vegetable Kingdom," p. 551. 

 t They form the genus Eucalyptus. 

 % Eucal. rohusla. 



135 



