MANUFACTURE OF PAPER IN TASMANIA. 61 



off, and put in calabashes for sale. The wood of the tree is of a close grain, 

 handsomely veined, nearly of a mahogany colour, but redder ; it retains 

 for a long time an agreeable fragrant odour, and takes a fine polish. It 

 would be excellent for cabinet-makers, but is seldom to be obtained, as the 

 trees are never felled, until by age or accidental decay all their precious sap 

 is exhausted. This balsam was long erroneously supposed to be a produc- 

 tion of Southern America ; for in the early periods of the Spanish domi- 

 nion, and by the commercial regulations then existing relative to the fruits 

 of this coast, it was usually sent by the merchants here to Callao, and being 

 thence transmitted to Spain, it there received the name of the balsam of 

 Peru, being deemed indigenous to that region. The real place of its origin 

 was known only to a few mercantile men. 



MANUFACTURE OF PAPER IN TASMANIA. 



We have not the exact particulars before us of the extent to which paper 

 is used in the Australian colonies. But when we mention the fact, that there 

 are issued in Victoria alone upwards of fifty newspapers, of which number 

 some ten or a dozen are dailies, we furnish one element of the calculation 

 that will materially assist it. In Australia paper enters as largely as in any 

 country in the world of equal population into all the ordinary transactions 

 of commerce and social life. The demand for it is necessarily enormous, 

 and it is year by year increasing. Like all supplies drawn from a distance 

 the quantity of stock greatly fluctuates, and there have been times when 

 grave embarrassment was experienced, and the most serious apprehensions 

 entertained of the stoppage of establishments in which large capitals were 

 invested, from the failure of this most necessary article. The Melbourne 

 newspapers have before now had to resort to the use of coloured papers, 

 and the Geelong Advertiser was once printed on coarse brown packing paper. 

 In addition to the requirements of the newspaper press, and the ordinary 

 trade and domestic demand for paper, a publishing trade is being developed 

 which will create a new demand. It is enough, however (says a Hobart Town 

 paper), to insist upon the fact that the wants of a civilised community of 

 upwards of a million persons in respect of this article have to be supplied, 

 and that at present every pound and sheet of paper used is imported, to 

 demonstrate our position that a paper mill established in Tasmania would 

 find ready to take its produce to a market so constant and so consumptive as 

 to render the enterprise highly remunerative. 



It may be suggested, indeed, that if these conclusions are so patent, it 

 might be anticipated that colonial capital would readily embrace the oppor- 

 tunity offered for profitable investment ; and the suggestion has sufficient 

 pertinence to call for remark. There is a disproportionate share of colonial 

 capital which has been invested in mining pursuits — stimulated by the hope 

 of larger profits than could be expected from other forms of enterprise — a 

 condition of things which there is every reason to believe will now rapidly 



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