116 A NATURALIST IN TASMANIA cm 



most beautiful pink timber of a fairly workable 

 soft wood. The form of this tree is most graceful, 

 as shown in the foreground of the photograph on 

 p. 98. A small bit of the foliage is shown in 

 Fig. 33, B. 



Besides the Pines, another exceedingly fine 

 forest tree, which furnishes a most valuable hard 

 wood to the miners, is the Leatherwood (Eucry- 

 phia Billardieri), belonging to a small sub-order of 

 the Saxifrageae with its nearest allies in Australia 

 and South America. The Leatherwood grows 

 into a fine spreading forest tree of sixty feet, 

 with rather large pale-green leaves, and its mag- 

 nificent wealth of white blossom in the summer 

 months constitutes one of the great beauties of 

 the west coast forest. The tree when in full 

 bloom is a mass of white, and has something 

 the appearance of a pear-tree in blossom, and 

 round the flowers the honey-eating birds, such as 

 Parakeets, Honey-eaters, Zoster ops, collect in the 

 same way as round the gum-flowers. 



Of the smaller trees the commonest is the 

 Sassafras, with its slender stem and shining 

 green foliage, while here and there swamp Tea- 

 trees shoot up to an astonishing height. 



I have already mentioned the marvellous density 

 of the undergrowth which everywhere surrounds 

 the forest trees, affording one of the chief obstacles 

 to the exploration and opening up of the country, 

 as every yard of progress has to be literally hacked 

 out with an axe. 



