THE TALLEST TREES IN THE WORLD.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 54, 14 June 1884, Page 7

THE TALLEST TREES IN THE WORLD.

It is usually considered that this epithetbelongs, par excellence, to the famous " Big I'rees" in California, variously known 1 by the names of Wellingtonia or Sequoia. These are, however, far surpassed in height, and probably also in the total amount of timber in a single tree, by the real giants of the vegetable kingdom, the noble gum trees of the genus Eucalyptus, which grow in the Victorian State Forest, on the slopes of the mountains dividing G-ipps Land from the rest of the colony of Victoria, and also in the mountain ranges north of Cape Otway, the first land which is usually " made" by any vesspl bound from England to, Melbourne direct. As will presently be shown, there are only four of the Californian trees known to be above 300 feet high, the tallest being 325 feet, and only about sixty have been measured that exceed 200 feet in height In the large tracts near tne sources of the Watts River, however (a northern branch of Yarra-yarra, at the mouth of which Melbourne is built), all the trees average from 250 to 300 feet in height, mostly straight as au arrow, and with very few branches. Many fallen trees measure 350 feet in length, and one huge specimen was discovered lately which was found, by actual measurement with a tape, to be 435 feet long from its roots to where the trunk had been broken off by the fall ; and at that point it was 3 feet in diameter, so that the entire tree could not have been less than 500 feet in total height. It was 18 feet in diameter at 5 feet from the ground, and was a Eucalyptus of either of the species E oblique or E amygdalma. It should be noted that these gigantic trees do not, like their California!! prototypes, grow in Bmall and isolated groves, towering above smaller specimens ol the same or of closely allieu kinds, but that, both in the Dandenong and Otway ranges, nearly every tree in the forest, over a large area, is on this enormous scale. — World of Wonders.

" Oh, will he bite ?" exclaimed one of Middletown,s sweetest girls, with a ,look of alarm, when she saw one of the dancing bears on the street the other day. " No," said her escort, " he cannot bite — lie is muzzled ; but he can hug." „ Oh," she said, with a distracting smile, " I don't mind that "