TREES 
S6 
Kauri {Dammari Australis, or Pinus Kauri). This 
tree is of the genus Pine ; and has attracted much 
of the attention of Europeans, on account of 
its magnitude, and the excellency of its wood; 
answering every purpose of house-building, and 
being excellently adapted, from its size, lightness, 
and strength, for the top-masts of the largest 
East-Indiamen and men-of-war. It grows, in 
some of the forests, from eighty-five to ninety- 
five feet high, without a branch. The trunk of 
the tree is of immense girth, being sometimes 
twelve feet in diameter; and when the bark 
and sap are removed, the circumference of the 
solid heart of the log is thirty-three feet, being a 
diameter of eleven feet It will scarely be 
believed, by an English timber-merchant, that I 
have measured a Kauri-tree whose circumference 
was forty feet eleven inches, perfectly sound 
throughout ; the gum oozing out of it, when the 
bark was wounded, as though it were a plant 
of only a few years' growth. The sap of the 
Kauri, as indeed of every other tree in New 
Zealand, is thickest on the shaded side ; that is, on 
the south and south-west side, or that portion of 
the plant which faces the south or south-west : 
it is on that side, sometimes, seven inches thick ; 
while the opposite sides, those facing the north 
and north-east, have only five inches of sap; 
and the heart, or solid part, of the tree, is 
harder and more durable than the other side. 
The sap soon rots, being very succulent in its 
