XXIII.] 



BLUE GUM. 



243 



Table XCIII. 

 Vertical or Crushing Strain on cubes of 2 inches. 



BLUE GUM {Eucalyptus Globulus)* 



is found abundantly spread over a great part of Aus- 

 tralia and Van Diemen's Land. It is a tree of straight 



* In reference to the Eucalyptus Globulus, the following appeared in the 

 Homeward Mail in 1873 : — 



" A Disease-destroying Tree. — M. Gimbert, who has been long 

 engaged in collecting evidence concerning the Australian tree, Eucalyptus 

 Globulus, the growth of which is surprisingly rapid, attaining, besides, 

 gigantic dimensions, has addressed an interesting communication to the 

 Academy of Sciences. This plant, it now appears, possesses an extra- 

 ordinary power of destroying miasmatic influence in fever-stricken districts. 

 It has the singular property of absorbing ten times its weight of water from 

 the soil, and of emitting antiseptic camphorous effluvia. AVhen sown in 

 marshy ground it will dry it up in a very short time. . The English were 

 the first to try it at the Cape, and within two or three years they completely 

 changed the climatic condition of the unhealthy parts of the colony. A few 

 years later its plantation was undertaken on a large scale in various parts of 

 Algeria. At Pardock, twenty miles from Algiers, a farm, situated on the banks 

 of the Hamyze, was noted for its extremely pestilential air. In the spring of 1867 

 about 1,300 of the Eucalyptus were planted there. In July of the same year, 

 at the time when the fever season used to set in, not a single case occurred, yet 

 the trees were not more than nine feet high. Since then complete immunity 

 from fever has been maintained. In the neighbourhood of Constantine the 

 farm of Ben Machydlin was equally in bad repute. It was covered with marshes 

 both in winter and summer. In five years the whole ground was dried up by 

 14,000 of these trees, and farmers and children enjoy excellent health, At the 

 factory of the Gue de Constantine, in three years a plantation of Eucalyptus has 

 transformed twelve acres of marshy soil into a magnificent park, whence fever 

 has completely disappeared. In the island of Cuba this and all other paludal 

 diseases are fast disappearing from all the unhealthy districts where this tree 

 has been introduced. A station-house at one of the ends of the railway viaduct 



R 2 



