XXVI.] 
BLUE GUM. 
201 
THE BLUE GTJM TREE {Eucalyptus globulus)* 
is found abundantly spread over a great part of Aus¬ 
tralia and Van Diemen’s Land. It is a tree of straight 
growth, and attains a height of 200 to 300 feet, with a 
diameter of from 6 to 25 feet. Like the Jarrah, it is 
* In reference to the Eucalyptus globulus, the following appeared in the 
Homeward Mail in 1873 : — 
“ A Disease-destroying Tree. —M. Gimbert, who has been long 
engaged in collecting evidence concerning the Australian tree, Eucalyptus 
globulus, the growth of which is surprisingly rapid, attaining, besides, 
gigantic dimensions, has addressed an interesting communication to the 
Academy of Sciences. This plant, it now appears, possesses an extra¬ 
ordinary power of destroying miasmatic influence in fever-stricken districts. 
It has the singular property of absorbing ten times its weight of water from 
the soil, and of emitting antiseptic camphorous effluvia. When sown in 
marshy ground it will dry it up in a very short time. The English were 
the first to try it at the Cape, and within two or three years they com¬ 
pletely changed the climatic condition of the unhealthy parts of the colony. 
A few years later its plantation was undertaken on a large scale in various 
parts of Algeria. At Pardock, twenty miles from Algiers, a farm, situated 
on the banks of the Hamyze, was noted for its extremely pestilential air. 
In the spring of 1867 about 1,300 of the Eucalyptus were planted there. In 
July of the same year, at the time when the fever season used to set in, not a 
single case occurred, yet the trees were not more than nine feet high. 
Since then complete immunity from fever has been maintained. In the 
neighbourhood of Constantine the farm of Ben Machydlin was equally in 
bad repute. Tt was covered with marshes both in winter and summer. In five 
years the whole ground was dried up by 14,000 of these trees, and farmers 
and children enjoy excellent health. At the factory of the Gue de Con¬ 
stantine, in three years a plantation of Eucalyptus has transformed twelve 
acres of marshy soil into a magnificent park, whence fever has completely 
disappeared. In the island of Cuba this and all other paludal diseases are 
fast disappearing from all the unhealthy districts where this tree has been 
introduced. A station-house at one of the ends of the railway viaduct in 
the Department of the Var was so pestilential that the officials could not 
be kept there longer than a year. Forty of these trees were planted, and 
it is now' as healthy as any other place on the line. We have no informa¬ 
tion as to whether this beneficent tree will grow in other but hot climates. 
We hope that experiments will be made to determine this point. It -would, 
be a good thing to introduce it on the West Coast of Africa.” 
