388 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
themselves that not only did the Eucalyptus globulus offer a 
source of industrial wealth to the colony as timber, but also, if 
planted on a sufficiently extensive scale, a guarantee against 
the hitherto invincible enemy, malaria. How assiduously planting 
was carried on may be judged by one fact. In 1862 not a single 
seed had been sown in Algeria, whereas at the present time we 
find there many hundred thousand trees, two millions having 
been sown and planted in the colony altogether. Large numbers 
have died in their early state, greater care being then required 
than was always given ; and the Arabs also are very destructive 
to the young plantations, the women and children often break- 
ing and mutilating the trees when in want of brooms or branches. 
These trees vary in height from fifty to sixty feet, and in some 
cases have been known to grow to a height of thirty yards in 
ten years; two yards a year is no unusual growth. Individual 
efforts, however, could not have brought about such large re- 
sults, and the Algerian Grovernment, as well as public compa- 
nies, have seconded them in many districts. It was found that 
wherever the Eucalyptus was planted abundantly, sanitary con- 
ditions improved, so that alike a love of science and humanity 
stimulated the work. 
Many species have been and are being daily tried, but at 
present the large plantations consist principally of the Eucalyp- 
tus globulus . The species E . colosea , which is a hardier 
tree in the sun than the E . globulus , flourishes in the desert 
at Laghouat. These fragrant Australian forests in the midst of 
African deserts now form one of the marvels of Algerian travel ; 
but during my two visits eleven or twelve years ago the very 
name of Eucalyptus was only familiar to a few savants , and not 
a single tree was growing on large tracts now green and um- 
brageous with the familiar bluish-green foliage and slender 
branches. 
But not in Algeria alone has the work of propagation been 
vigorously carried on, though the French- African colony may 
be regarded as the adopted country of the Blue Grum Tree. On 
the coast of the Riviera, in the South of France and Spain, in 
Corsica, in the jungles of Ceylon, in the Transvaal, and other 
parts of South Africa, as also in Jamaica, the Eucalyptus has been 
planted by the arboriculturist or the colonist, and always with 
the best results. A year or two ago very interesting letters 
appeared in a Ceylon newspaper on the effect of Eucalyptus- 
planting in the jungle. Wherever such experiments had been 
carried on to any extent jungle fever showed a perceptible 
tendency to diminish. Its introduction into Valencia is due 
to the combined efforts of M. Ramel and a countryman of our 
own, equally indefatigable in the same cause, Mr. Wilson. At the 
time of a journey made by them in Spain the malaria was raging. 
