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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
lyptus timber from Tasmania reached, a few years ago, the large 
sum of 800, 000£., which may give some idea of its value in 
that country. Of course the extraordinary rapidity of growth 
enters largely into these calculations. 
Next to suitability of climate the soil has to be considered. 
Not only does it flourish in marshy grounds and swamps, but, as 
Baron Muller shows us to be the case in its native land, in dry 
and arid wastes, thus rendering it equally adapted to the sun- 
baked mountain-sides and swampy plains of Algeria. The Eu- 
calyptus, indeed, resists the summer droughts, and profits by the 
rains of spring, winter, and autumn, wherever the mildness of 
the temperature enables it to flourish. 
Specimens of Eucalyptus timber were seen at the London Ex- 
hibition of 1862, one of which measured twenty-three yards in 
length, with a circumference of three and a half. The best 
whalers cruising in the southern seas, are made of Eucalyptus 
wood. It is largely used in ship-building generally, and in 
the construction of railway sleepers, bridges, jetties, viaducts ; 
less so in carpentry, on account of the difficulty of working 
it up on a small scale. Such obstacles, however, may be 
overcome, and we may hope ere long for a pleasing variety of 
art furniture in the shape of Eucalyptus upholstery. This tree, 
moreover, so productive of solid benefits in the shape of timber, 
abounds in lighter graces, attracting the birds by its ample foliage, 
and the bees by means of the abundant honey contained in its 
flowers. Formerly the bee was unknown in Australia, but it has 
been speedily domesticated, in consequence of the Eucalyptus 
flowers. Such honey should surely rival that of the far-famed 
Hymettus. The history of the Eucalyptus is, indeed, one of 
those fairy-tales of Science which fills the mind with wonder 
and delight. Here we have in a seed not larger than a mustard- 
seed not only a source of commercial wealth, and therefore na- 
tional prosperity, but, what is far more important, of the health 
of coming generations, and the amelioration of those physical 
conditions in which man is compelled to live. Just as, in the 
intellectual history of society, the word may be a lever of im- 
measurable power, lifting the minds of others to higher regions 
of thought, enlarging man’s spiritual domains, so, in the natural 
history of the world, the seed is a mighty agent for good, spread- 
ing beneficent influence around, revealing new scientific triumphs, 
bestowing undreamed of largesses on all. 
Whether, therefore, we behold the Eucalyptus globulus in an 
English glass-house, or in the more favoured lands of its adop- 
tion, alike the slender sapling, with its silvery blue-green leaves, 
and the lofty forest tree spreading abundant shadow, affords a 
worthy subject of wonder and admiration. But we must re- 
member that Nature has not done all. Were it not for the 
