26 
of India, about a thousand species, and yet so far he has only been 
afforded a chance of classifying a little more than one-half. 
On the ranges at the head of the Little Mulgrave and Freshwater 
Creek, there are countless numbers of a giant hardwood-tree 'that 1 
never saw anywhere else. It usually varied in size from three feet to 
seven feet in diameter, with a tall clean trunk going straight into the 
ground like a kauri pine. On parts of the summits of all the ranges 
I traversed there were patches of dead trees showing no traces of 
lightning, and yet standing in localities where there was no possibility 
of injury from fire. My opinion is that nearly all of them had expired 
of old age. Their long bare gray branches stood out in funereally 
mournful relief against the rich deep green of the surrounding tropical 
foliage. On Bellenden-Ker there were many dead and dying speci- 
mens of the beautiful dome-shaped tree, which Mr. Bailey tells me 
belongs to the myrtle family, and will probably be found to be an 
entirely new species. 
In the valleys of the Eussell and Mulgrave, and all along the 
ranges up to about 2,000 feet, there al^e vast quantities of Castanosper- 
mum australis, the Moreton Bay chesnut, a tree common as far south 
as the Clarence River, where its beauties as a cabinet wood were first 
proclaimed twenty-six years ago by the late Eobert Muir, of Nerang 
Creek. I am not aware how far this tree extends along the Cape York 
Peninsula. The beans are fatal to stock when eaten repeatedly, but 
the blacks use them for food after extracting the poisonous principle 
by maceration in running water in the usual way. Samples sent home 
in the log from Cairns were pronounced by the London timber merchants 
equal to the finest pollard oak. 
Among the timbers of that district will certainly be found some 
not excelled in the world for beauty in cabinet and fancy work, and 
there are just as surely others which will successfully answer all the 
purposes for which Australia is now importing timber from foreign 
countries. I have no hesitation in prophesying the discovery there of 
trees in all ways perfectly adapted to every object for which woods 
are utilised by mankind. 
And the sooner we possess a complete knowledge of all our 
timbers the less the sacrifice our ignorance of the present will compel 
us to make for the benefit of an ungrateful future. 
Tours, with respect, 
ARCHIBALD MESTON. 
I reproduce here my description of the scene witnessed from 
the south peak of Bellenden-Ker in Eebruar}', when I made my first 
ascent of the mountain: — All was distinctly visible, in the perfectly 
clear atmosphere, in a radius of, at least, lOO miles in all directions. 
"We were silent in the awful presence of that tremendous picture 
that had lain there unaltered since Chaos and the Earthquake painted 
it in smoke and flame and terror in the dark morning of the world ! 
It was a hall of the Genii of the Universe, the Odeon of the eternal 
gods, with its immortal floor paved with the green mosaic of land 
and ocean, and overhead the arched blue roof flashing in diamonds and 
prismatic radiance to the far sky-line on the edge of the dim horizon. 
