EUCALYPTUS TREES. 149 ' 



Osiers and other willows used for basket-work, for 

 charcoal, or for the preparation of salicine, might line 

 any river banks, quite as much for the sake of shade 

 and consolidation of the soil as for their direct utili- 

 tarian properties. In the forest ranges any dense line 

 of Willows and Poplars will help to check the spread 

 of the dreadful conflagrations in which so much of the 

 best timber is lost, and through which the tempera- 

 ture of the country is for days heightened to an intol- 

 erable degree far beyond tlie scenes of devastation, 

 while injuries are inflicted far and wide to the labors 

 in the garden or the field. In the most arid deserts 

 the medicinal Aloes might readily be established, 

 to yield by a simple process the drug of commerce. 

 Gourds of half a hundred weight have been obtained 

 in Victoria, and show what the plants of the Melon 

 tribe might do here, like in South Africa, for eligible 

 spots in the desert land. Among the trees for those 

 arid tracts, the glorious Grevillea robusta, with its in- 

 numerable trusses of fiery red, and its splendid wood 

 for staves, is only" one of the very many desirable ; 

 just as in the oases the Carob-tree will live without 

 water, uninjured, because its deeply-penetrating roots 

 render it fit to resist any drought. But it may be said 

 that much that I instance is well known and well 

 recorded — so, doubtless, it is, in the abstract — but va- 

 riety requires to be distinguished from variety, spe. 

 cies from species, and their geography, internal struc- 

 ture and components need carefully to be set forth, 

 before any industry relating to plants can be raised 

 on sound ground in proper localities', and be brought 

 to its best fruitfulness. 

 Even a pond, a streamlet — how, with intelligent 



