parts of the country, and particularly on portions of the southern coast westward of King George's Sound, where it is easily accessible for shipping, and exceeds the size required for beams of the largest man-of-war." The blue gum is said to be unfit for masts and spars on account of its great weight, although well adapted for machinery or planking of any kind, in which last capacity its immense length must offer great advantages, as it attains a straight growth of more than a hundred feet without knot or branch.
The red gum, Eucalyptus resinifera, furnishes also a hard close-grained timber fit for naval purposes, but its numerous "gum veins" render it unfit for outer planking. The same old report from which I have just quoted says that iron corrodes very little either in the jarrah or the red and blue gums, but its author's recommendation of the blue gum for the upper works of men-of-war "on account of the impossibility of either splitting or splintering it" was evidently given before turreted ships and ironclads had been dreamed of, and it must wait to be experimented upon until the day when, according to maritime croakers, England will break up her metal fleets and once again defend herself with wooden walls.
The time has arrived, however, when the boundless wealth of the West Australian forests shall no longer be produced in vain, and since our return to England a number of persons belonging to Victoria, have enrolled themselves under the name of the "West Australian Timber Company," to whom, in the words of the Governor at the opening of the new Legislative Council at Perth in December, 1870, "Her Majesty's Government" have per-
