The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1885-01-10

In An Australian Forest.
From the London Garden.

From the London Garden
All the world has heard of the big trees
in California, of which Americans so proudly
boast, telling us that they are the biggest
trees known; but it is not everybody who
believes that our Australian colonies can
point to trees in the moist and rich valleys
of the Australian A ps that far surpass the
Californian giants in height, though in
girth they fall far short, as the eucalyptus
trunk does not swell out toward the bot
tom of the bale, and its bark, which in
many species is annually shed, is as thin as
that of the Wellingtonia q beg our Amer
lean cousins pardon, Sequoia gigantea is
abnormally thick. Australia is a country
of extremes; there are tracts of hideous
desolation, huge waterless plains which it
is death to attempt to cross, for thousand
miles may be traversed without meeting
one rivulet, and for all this there are re-
gions where the soil is SO rich and the rain
fall so abundant that vegetation may be
found still perpetuating the exuberant
growth and beauty of the epoch that filed
our coal measures. 1t is pretty thought
that the myrtle we so prize, and which
grows wild SO abundantly in Southern
Europe, is the sweet and sole representa-
tive in our hemisphere of the great family
of eucalyptus, or gum trees, which reaches
to such colossal height in the Southern
Hemisphere, and all who have smelt and
appreciated the scented air of an Australian
forest enjoy doubly the touch of astringency
in the perfume of crushed myrtle spray.
Comparisons, as Mrs. Malaprop tells US,
are "odorous, so we will not do more than
hint at the baroness and desolation round
the mighty boles of the Californian Sc
quotas, whose tufted branchlets cling so
closely to the mighty mast that verdure or
shade there is none, so to say. "How
different is an Australian forest where the
giant white or blue gums grow" True it
is that the trunks tower up, may be 250
feet, before they branch into head that
looks small to those who are down below,
yet that head would be gigantic were it
nearer our eyes true, also, that the leaves
hang vertically Gas de the branchlets of the
sequoia), and so but little filtering of the
intense sunlight is accomplished by them;
but then instead of barrenness beneath, we
first have towering sassafras trees with
dense evergreen foliage and delicate Azara-
like sprays of growth, tipped with tiny
pink bells; next come tall evergreen shrubs
with large and shining leaves as handsome
as any Bay tree or Portugal laurel and
yet again the feathery heads of tree ferns
(Alsophila or Dicksonia) fill up the vacant
spaces between each tree, till the wonder is
how so much can grow together. In their
turn, the tree ferns are clad with MOSES
and flmy ferns, so that as you struggle
through this tangle the last remaining sur
vivors of vegetation of former epochs ex-
plain mutely how in the struggle for exis-
tence the most perfect beauty exists only
where the conditions of life remain as they
were first created destroy but one link or
introduce some too robustly constituted
European weed, and slowly, but surely, all
this old world beauty disappears. 1t is
well, then, to obtain and to keep anything
that may give an idea, however small, of
that thing of beauty, an Australian forest,
In using the expression 'sold world /
would explain, for fear of being misunder-
stood, that Australia west of the Alps or
Blue Mountains, with the most trifing ex-
ceptions, has never been submerged, hence
it is that the plants of our coal measures
survive there alone.
Another strange feature in the Austria
Ian forests is the indestructibility of the
fallen trees, owing to the hardness of their
wood, SO that whole valleys may be found
where the fallen trunks of past ages bridge
over, as it were, with a false bottom, the
streams that flow hidden beneath. Covered
with hymenophyllums, and even big tree
ferns, the traveller walks on boldly in ig
norance of the pitfalI below, till slip or
chance peep into an opening reveals to him
the insecurity of his position. Such moist
and dark recesses are the haunt of many
snake, and woe be to that stranger who
unwarily should fall into those airless and
Shiny regions. Perhaps, save for this, it
were too like Eden.