THE EUCALYPTUS, OR THE FEVER-TREE. 173 
is indigenous are healthy, and those into which it has 
been introduced and thriven have become healthy. <A 
few miles from Algiers is a farm which was once noted 
for its deadly fevers. Life on it in the summer months 
was almost impossible. In the year 1867 the owners 
planted thirteen hundred eucalyptus-trees, and they 
grew nine feet in thirteen months, and not a single case 
of fever appeared, nor has there been any fever there 
since. Now if the eucalyptus will make the sickly cli- 
mate of the Fontane healthy, it can safely be relied on 
as an antiseptic and disinfectant; and I advise those 
curious in such matters to watch the success of the Trap- 
pist monks in its cultivation. 
Near Constantine, Algeria, there were vast swamps, 
never dry even in the hottest months, and productive of 
violent periodic fevers. About fourteen thousand euca- 
lyptus-trees were planted there, and they soon dried up 
every square foot of the swamp and killed off the fevers. 
Maison Carrie, near Hanasch, was once a great market 
for quinine, as there was much fever, but since the blue- 
gum has been planted there the demand has almost en- 
tirely ceased. Mexico and Cuba were, also, a great 
many years ago, large consumers of quinine, and, as the 
mercantile books of export show, since the introduction 
of eucalyptus into those countries the demand has great- 
ly fallen off. 
Mr. John P. Curry relates the successful completion 
of a contract for planting two hundred thousand slips 
of the Australian gum-tree—eucalyptus—in the city of 
New Orleans. He says: “The sprouts having been 
raised in a hot-house, the planting of these trees com- 
menced some six years ago, the city government paying 
at the rate of ten cents for each tree planted. It has 
already been proven beyond question that this tree, when 
full-grown, absorbs, or, rather, kills the spores and ‘mi- 
asmas’ in all malarial and fever-ridden districts wherever 
planted. It is also believed, by scientists and many med- 
