EUCALYPTUS MARGINATA. 



Chelura and Limnoria, also the Teredo sea-mollusk and likewise the Termites, having in this 

 respect perhaps no other Australian competitor than E. rostrata, so that Jarrah-wood is in 

 extensive demand for jetties, piles, railway-crossties, fence-posts, telegraph-poles, all kinds of 

 underground structures, the planking of ships beneath the line of floatation and also for flooring. 

 It was further noticed that the timber from hills is darker, tougher and heavier than that from 

 plains. The more deeply saturated color of the wood depends on the greater quantity of a phloba- 

 phenic substance, chemically distinguished as Kino-red, which pervades the cavities of the 

 vascular and cellular tissue of the wood ; it is readily revealed by the microscope. Attention was 

 drawn to this preservative substance, which remains unchanged by water and dissolves only in 

 alkaline fluids, already in the Jurors' Report for the Victorian Exhibition of 1862, more 

 particularly through Dr. J. Coates. To this antiseptic principle Jarrah-wood owes seemingly 

 its extraordinary durability, it being developed (so far as our observations went) to the extent of 

 16 to 17 per cent, (in air-dried wood), the percentage being as much as that in E. rostrata and 

 from twice to five times as much as in the other West-Australian timbers hitherto examined. It 

 is also a significant fact, that the Kino-red is most richly stored in the harder and darker sorts of 

 Jarrah-timber, which^s known to be the most perfect in its resistance to decay. In my work on 

 "Select Plants for Industrial Culture and Naturalisation" (see Indian edition, p. 114) it is also 

 already mentioned, that Jarrah-wood furnishes one of the best materials for charcoal. 



In correct appreciation of E. marginata for forest-culture it should however be mentioned, 

 that this species, which I first of all brought under culture here and caused to be reared also to 

 some extent in many places abroad, has not shown at Melbourne that celerity of growth, which 

 many other Eucalypts exhibit ; still its development may be more rapid in wooded mountainous 

 tracts of cbunF^ 



The vastness of its treasure in this timber for Western Australia may be estimated when we 

 reflect that E. marginata stretches uninterruptedly through a length of 350 miles parallel to the 

 coast, and that a multitude of sEppiiig*^aces at no^greairdlstance from the forests give ready 

 access to the traffic in this most valuable timber. 



Explanation of Analytic Details. — 1, an imexpanded flower, the lid lifted ; 2, longitudinal section of an 

 unexpanded flower ; 3, some stamens in situ ; 4 and 5, front- and back -view of an anther with portion of its 

 filament ; 6, style and stigma ; 7 and 8, transverse and longitudinal section of a fruit ; 9 and 10, fertile and sterile 

 seeds ; 11, embryo in situ ; 12, embryo uncoiled ; 13, portion of a leaf ; all the figures magnified, but to various 

 extent. 



