EUCALYPTUS MAEGINATA. 



E. santalifolia is distinguished by its shrubby growth, has leaves much like those of 

 E. buprestium, the leaf-stalks short, the flower-stalklets thick and very abbreviated, the lid 

 broader, the anther-cells rather less divergent and fruits like E. capitellata and B. macrorrhyncha. 



The Jarrah in its humid native region seems more indifferent to soil and situations than 

 most other Eucalypts, but it avoids hot and dry tracts of country. I saw it descend on sandy 

 ridges and calcareous declivities close to the sea-shores, traced it as a shrub to the rocky summits 

 of the Stirling's Range (nearly 3,000 feet high) and noticed it to come down even to wet flats. 

 But its development for extensive timber-forests takes place on the ranges of older rocks, still 

 within the influence of the sea-air, as shown on the forest-map issued by the Hon. Malcolm Eraser, 

 the Minister of the Lands Department of West Australia ; — thus it extends seldom beyond fifty 

 miles from the coast, and where it stretches farther inland, as towards the sources of the Blackwood- 

 River, the Jarrah-forests meet in a comparatively moist region the cooling influence both of 

 westerly and southerly breezes from two difi'erent shores ; but the mountainous nature of the 

 country in that direction and possibly its geologic configuration may also be the cause of the tree 

 there trending more inland. Jarrah-trees do not enter to any extent the forests of the Karri 

 (E. diversicolor) or of the Western White Gum (E. redunca) or of the York Gum-tree (E. loxo- 

 phleba), the first replacing E. marginata in a broad littoral belt between Cape Leeuwin and the 

 lower Gordon-River (and being again fronted by E. ficifolia), while E. redunca constitutes 

 prevailingly the forests of the drier eastern portions of the coast-ranges, E. loxophleba occupying 

 a strip of country along the middle of the E. redunca-region, thus dividing the latter into two 

 parts ; this distribution is ruled perhaps more by climatic than by geologic agencies. Throughout 

 nearly the whole region of its range the Jarrah is largely mixed with E. calophylla J^the South- 

 West Australian Red Gum-tree or Bloodwood-tree), which there next to E. marginata is the most 

 frequent of the gregarious forest-trees, being interspersed as well among E. redunca as among 

 E. loxophleba, where they predominate. Isolated patches of straggling Jarrah-trees occur in 

 some places beyond the main-area here indicated as occupied by this species. 



E. marginta is not a tree of rapid growth and therefore not one of early regeneration either, 

 a fact which in the disposal of its pristine forests should thoughtfully be borne in mind. It 

 flowers from October to December. The stomata of the leaves were found by us here either 

 wholly hypogenous from 110,000 to 200,000 on a square inch, or heterogenous, varying from 

 50,000 to 70,000. 



Mr. Aug. Gregory informs ns, that some of the aboriginal tribes used to call the tree 

 " Jerrile," that it grows principally on a concretionary ironstone, which he considers oolithic. He 

 noticed it also on deep sands resting on ironstone-formation, but timber obtained from sand is not 

 equal in value to that from the Ranges, and his thirty years' experience as a traveller in West 

 Australia led him to observe, that E. marginata is confined to areas, which are within the 

 influence of the prevailing moist south-western summer-winds. 



In referring to the almost unrivalled superiority of the Jarrah-timber as well nigh inde- 

 structible and yet easily worked, we may quote here the high authority'or'a professional judge, 

 Mr. H. E. Victor, C.E., Swan River, who after a long local experience reported on this wood 

 substantially as follows for the Paris Exhibition of 1878 : " Open to air and weather, on wind- 

 and water-line, under the soil or submerged, it is not materially affected, remaining intact after 

 nearly fifty years' trial. The choicest timber is obtained from the summit of the granite- and 

 ironstone-ranges ; trees grown on sandy plains near the sea yield a timber of inferior quality. 



