85 



barks of the trees are impossible. The time will come when photographs and other true 

 illustrations of types of barks of Australian trees will find their way into the schools, 

 and lessons on the barks of Australian trees and the shapes of trees, and notes on the 

 situations in which trees with special barks are found, will be available to students. 

 As a rule, I am afraid that some artists, sensitive of their weak spots in Australian 

 tree-drawing, give us vague drawings that are indeterminable. At all events, I have 

 often failed to comprehend the tree which has been in an artist's mind, simply because 

 I could not determine the bark. I am, of course, referring to drawings with some 

 detail, and not to impressionist sketches. 



I have often, on a railway or coach journey, heard people deplore the monotony 

 of the Australian forest. There is no necessity to make comparisons of the forests of 

 one country with another, but I say without hesitation that, to me, the Australian 

 Eucalyptus forest is one of the most varied and charming of any country I know. 

 Leaving aside the habit of the tree, its size, canopy, colour of foliage, the study of the 

 barks may become of never-ending interest. I have often been thanked by fellow- 

 travellers, who have said that I had given new interest to a journey by pointing out 

 the marvellous variation in barks alone. Where curiosity is excited, there may be a 

 stimulus to further knowledge, and instead of the parrot cry of the monotony of the bush 

 we shall have the feeling statement that our trees increase in charm as we know more 

 about them. This depreciation of the Australian bush is observed in regard to other 

 phases of it. As a very general rule it is not spiteful, but rather jocular, and springs 

 from ignorance. As knowledge progresses, it will tend to disappear. 



In " A Text-book of Botany," Coulter, Barnes, and Cowles (vol. ii, Ecology) 

 these distinguished authors discuss barks more from the physiological aspect, and the 

 (chiefly) American barks they cite by way of illustration have, to some extent, their 

 analogies in Eucalyptus. Following are some extracts, with my brief comments in 

 square brackets : — 



1. Smoothness and roughness — Exfoliation. — When the epidermis persists, young stems are smooth, 

 except in the neighbourhood of lenticels and leaf-scars. 



For a few years most stems remain smooth or smoothish, owing to the development of bark 

 tissues as the stem increases in diameter. In some trees (as in the Beech, Fagus) continued lateral growth 

 causes the bark to remain thin and smooth throughout life ; the tropical rain-forest in particular is rich 

 in smooth-barked trees. . . . (p. 708). [These remarks also apply to Eucalyptus, many of which, 

 tropical or sub-tropical rain-forest, e.g., E. saligna. E. Torelliana, are Gums or Smooth-barks.] 



2. In most trees, new phellogen areas develop at deeper levels or lateral growth fails to keep pace 

 with diametric increases, so that the bark splits and becomes variously roughened. Some trees, as Burr 

 Oak (Quercus ■macrocarpa), become furrowed very early, while others, as Bass Wood (Tilia ainericana) 

 presumably remain smooth-barked for a very long time, but ultimately become furrowed. [Such trees 

 as these have much in common with some of our Ironbarks, even if the Oak, &c, barks be not so rough 

 and hard.] 



3. Tesserae. — " Alligator Bark " is caused by the division of the bark into blocks by somewhat 

 equidistant transverse and longitudinal furrows (as in Nyssa) (p. 708). [Amongst the Eucalypts 

 E. tessellaris, the Moreton Bay Ash, is an excellent example of this.] 



