EUCALYPTUS ALPmA. 



evolution- or transmutation-experiments, by which these theories might be brought to a crucial 

 test, will ever give us back again even one single real species, whether the Moa or Dodo or even 

 the humblest plant, when in its struggle for existence it became finally lost. 



The danger of E. alpina becoming extinct is lessened by its being brought into culture in our 

 Botanic Garden, where I reared it from seeds gathered by myself in 1853. But since that distant 

 time the plant in not altogether unfertile^bil ?eniamed as dwarf and bushy as in its place of 

 creation, having in a quarter of a century hardly attained a height over about a dozen feet and 

 shown no tendency to form a distinct stem. Therefore E. alpina is probably the slowest in growth 

 of al l jucalypts, and in this respect its contrast to E. globulus is all the more marked and 

 singular, inasmuch as it stands to that species of unparalleled celerity of growth among hardwood- 

 trees in nearest systematic affinity, though specifically quite distinct. E. globulus however, 

 irrespective of its gigantic stature, difi'ers in much longer and narrower leaves, sickleshaped- 

 attenuated and of lesser thickness with usually less immersed veins, in longer leaf-stalks, flowers 

 probably never more than 3 together and always of larger si^e, in a comparatively more depressed 

 lid, in the anthers longer and not almost cordate with a more prominent dorsal gland, in the fruit 

 being mostly very angular from longitudinal prominent verrucular lines, in the generally more 

 depressed rim separated by a deeper channel from the tube of the calyx, in often rather larger valves 

 of not lesser width than the rim ; further the oil-dots of the foliage are mostly unconcealed, and 

 the seedlings are totally different. In the fragmenta phytographi^ Australise vii. pp. 42-44, 

 notes on the seedlings of many Eucalypts were offered, and those of E. alpina mentioned as rough, 

 with cylindrical stem, opposite oval nearly sessile leaves, dark-green above, hardly 2 inches long. 

 In stature it resembles E. pachyphylla and some few others of the desert-species. Systematically 

 it approaches also in some respects E. cosmophylla and E. Preissiana, but the differences between 

 these are so great, as to need no special exposition. 



ExpiANATiON or AifALTTic Detaiis. — 1, longitudinal section of an unexpanded flower ; 2 and 3, front- and 

 back-view of a stamen ; 4, pistU ; 5 and 6, longitudinal and transverse section of fruit ; 7 and 8, sterile and fertile 

 seeds ; all magnified, but in various degrees. 



