Page:Timber and Timber Trees, Native and Foreign.djvu/221

XXVI.] THE BLUE GUM TREE (Eucalyptus globulus) In reference to the Eucalyptus globulus, the following appeared in the Homeward Mail in 1873:—

"—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 extraordinary 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 completely 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. It 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 Constantine, 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 information 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."

is found abundantly spread over a great part of Australia 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