AUSTRALIAN VEGETATION. 83 



(Pomaderris), and numerous other species. Amongst the 

 shrubs, the native musk, native mulberry, Pimeleas, native 

 snow-bush (Okarza Stellulata variety), native woodbine or 

 coffee-bush (Coprosma hii-telld), native mint-bush (Prosfan- 

 therd), scrub-box, and native currant ( Coprosma Billardieri\ 

 are perhaps the most frequently met with. But of all the 

 gigantic trees 1 found in Victoria, none can surpass the 

 grandeur of Eucalyptus amygdalma, var. regnans. 



1 As regards gigantic trees, it is generally supposed that the largest 

 trees in the world have been found in California and the West Indies. 

 In Rhind's Vegetable Kingdom, we read at pp. 701, 702, speaking 

 of Sequoia {Wellingtonia) gigantea, or 'Mammoth tree' — ' There are 

 specimens of this tree which, if not the most ancient, are unquestionably 

 the largest vegetable forms ever discovered, and, in all probability, the 

 most stupendous creations in the world, fossil or recent. The tree was 

 first found at a spot called Calaveros Grove, near the head waters of 

 the Stanislaus and San Antonio Rivers, in long. 120 10' W., lat. 38°N., 

 and about 4590 feet above the sea-level. The age of some of the 

 Californian trees is estimated at 3000 years, and for others a still 

 higher antiquity is claimed. Lord Richard Grosvenor, in i860, con- 

 firmed a statement which had often been repeated, that one specimen 

 was 450 feet in height, and 116 in circumference. Most of the 

 specimens now standing in the Mammoth-tree Grove, according to a 

 statement by the proprietor of the Kezv Miscellany , are of the average 

 height of 300 feet ; one of them, known as the " Mother of the Forest," 

 measured 327 feet in height, and 90 feet in circumference. Another 

 tree, the " Father of the Forest," has long since bowed his lofty head, 

 and lies prone on the earth. He still measures 112 feet in circum- 

 ference at the base, and in length can be traced 300 feet to where the 

 trunk was broken by falling against another tree ; at this point it 

 measures 18 feet in diameter, and according to the average taper of the 

 trees, this- giant must have reached a height of 450 feet. A hollow 

 tunnel has been burned through the trunk for 200 feet, capacious 

 enough for a person to ride into it on horseback. Some of the trees 

 have been destroyed from mere wantonness, others from cupidity. In 

 the progress of this execrable vandalism, the felling of one tree, we are 

 boastingly told, employed five men for twenty - two days, not in 

 chopping it down, but in boring it off with pump augers. It was then 

 only displaced by means of wedges, driven with butts of tree^, like 



