87 



sugar gum ; E. crebra, narrow leafed ironbark or gray gum ; E. 

 diver sicolor, Karri ; E. globulus, blue gum ; E. pilidaris, black- 

 butt ; E. punctata, leather jacket ; E. resinifera, mahogany, forest 

 mahogany, or red mahogany ; E. rostrata, Murray red gum, red 

 gum, mahogany ; E. tereticornis, gray gum, Queensland blue 

 gum, red gum, flooded gum, or bastard box ; E. microcorys, tal- 

 lowwood ; and E. viminalis, manna gum. 



Two years ago the term " commercial eucalyptus " was written 

 in quotation marks ; now it is a common term, and thousands of 

 acres have been devoted to seedling nurseries, and to timber 

 production. 



The commercial importance of the eucalyptus is implied in 

 the title of an article in a recent magazine * where it is ranked 

 with the hickory. All the species produce hardwood, varying 

 quite widely, however, in hardness. Originally the trees were 

 regarded as suitable for forest cover, for windbreaks, for hedge- 

 rows, and for fuel. Now, there is no possible use to which wood 

 may be put which is not claimed for one or more of the eucalypts 

 which may be grown in a region where the wood supply 

 has always been a distressing problem, and in a state where 

 the beams used in the old mission churches were, it is said, 

 carried hundreds of miles. The uses claimed by enthusiastic 

 growers include fuel, fenceposts, corduroy roads (sixty years 

 of service), paving blocks, railroad ties, bridge and mine tim- 

 bers, telegraph and telephone poles, shipbuilding,t cooperage, 

 furniture, house finishings and cabinet making. Handsomely 

 finished rooms with highly polished "mahogany" furniture 

 form part of the advertising methods of the larger eucalyptus and 

 state-promotion organizations. 



Extracting the antiseptic oil from the leaves and twigs is also 

 profitable ; that and the keeping of bees where they can feed 



* Hickory's Younger Brother, by F. D. Cornell in the Sunset Magazine, March, 

 1909. 



t " The wood is very dense, hard, close grained, and tough, and will bear a tre- 

 mendous load or strain. Some species produce a wood so dense as to be practically 

 impervious to water, and they are therefore almost proof against rot or decay, in water 

 or out of it, in the earth or out of it ; and, owing to the oils and acids in the wood 

 some species are proof against teredos, termites, insects, and borers." 



