Page:Victoria, with a description of its principal cities, Melbourne and Geelong.djvu/86

 from it—it does not take fire easily, and you seldom or ever hear of a house being burnt, notwithstanding the carelessness and drunkenness of servants. So hard, indeed, is the wood, that I have often kindled a fire on the timber floor of my workshop, without any injury to the apartment. The durability of such dense wood is of great importance, for around the cultivated fields we have neither hedges nor stone walls, the fences being entirely constructed of timber. A single tree may be found sufficient to fence an acre. The fences are constructed in the following manner:—Three rails are placed horizontally above one another, about eighteen inches apart, with each end inserted into morticed posts, sunk about two feet into the ground, and five feet above it. Two or three hundred rails and posts may be obtained from one tree; and there is a trade carried on in this line, and regular sawyers and splitters, whose trade is to go about preparing timber, and putting up these fences. For the most part the trees are of enormous dimensions, averaging from thirty to sixty feet in circumference four feet above the ground, and from two to three hundred feet in length. It is no uncommon thing to see a tree forty feet in circumference, and one hundred feet high, before even one branch appears. The common tree is the Eucalyptus or gumtree.

Our time does not permit us to enter into minute description of the various trees of the Australian forest; but as they bear a close affinity to those of