124 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
there is no question that a considerable number of species, very abundant 
the year when very little else is to be obtained. It is nigris that 
— is scarcely a parish in England where tons of wholesome food are 
not allowed to waste every year, to say nothing of the vicus for their 
sci culture. Berkeley reckons that there are at least thirty distinct 
English edible fungi; Dr. Curtis has partaken of forty in North Carolina, 
and enumerates one hundred and eleven species in that state alone re- 
puted to be edible. Fries, the greatest living cryptogamist, is publishing 
a large work on the edible and poisonous fungi of Sweden; several works 
ofa similar character have recently been brought out in Italy; in our 
own country the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, Mr. Worthington G. Smith and Dr. 
Bull of Hereford, may be mentioned as having paid special attention to 
the subject. — Quarterly Journal of Science. 
E TREES IN AUSTRALIA. — On this subject the government director 
of the Botanic Garden at Melbourne furnishes some qp» catio details, 
as follows:—‘‘The marvellous height of so f the Australian (and 
ásia v the Victorian) trees has become we. instr of Mon: investi- 
ation since of late (particularly through the miner's tracks) easier 
access has been afforded to the back gullies of our mountain system. 
Some astounding data, supported by actual measurements, are now on 
Th 
record. e highest tree previously known was a Karri Eucalyptus 
a deii select measured by Mr. Pemberton Nani in one 
delightful gle f the Warren River, in Western Australia, where it rises 
to ^ ado vum hundred feet high. Into the hollow trunk of this 
Karri, three riders, with an additional pack- -borse, could enter and turn in 
it without oo At the desire of the writer of those pages (Dr. 
Müller), Mr. D. Bogle measured a fallen tree of Eucalyptus amygdalina, in 
the deep recesses of Daudenong (Victoria), and obtained for it the length 
of four hundred and twenty feet, with proportionate width; while Mr. 
G. Klein took the measurement of a Eucalyptus on the Black Spur, ten 
miles distant from Healesville, four hundred and eighty feet high... - - 
It is not at all likely that, in these isolated inquiries, chance has led to 
the really highest trees, which the most secluded and the least accessible 
spots may still conceal. It seems, however, almost beyond dispute that 
the trees of Australia rival in length, though evidently not in thickness, 
even the renowned forest egg of California, Sequoia Wellingtonia, the 
highest of which, as far as the writer is aware, rises, in their favorite 
haunts at the Sierra even: to about four hundred and cuf feet. . .. 
Mossman's Origin of the Seasons, p. 367. [And see more at Sa od « Silli- 
man's Journal" for November, 1867, p. 422.] 
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