[27] "This obstacle was a forest of oaks, not giant oaks, but the very reverse, a forest of dwarf oaks (_Quercus nana_). Far as the eye could reach extended the singular wood, in which no tree rose above thirty inches in height. Yet was it no thicket, no undergrowth of shrubs, but a true forest of oaks, each tree having its separate stem, its boughs, its lobed leaves, and its bunches of brown acorns."--Capt. Mayne Reid, _The War Trail_, chap. lxiv. [28] Respecting the timber trees of this tract, Dr. Ferdinand von Mueller, the Government botanist, thus writes:--"At the desire of the writer of these pages, Mr. D. Bogle measured a fallen tree of _Eucalyptus amygdalina_, in the deep recesses of Dandenong, and obtained for it a length of 420 feet, with proportions of width, indicated in a design of a monumental structure placed in the exhibition; while Mr. G. Klein took the measurement of a _Eucalyptus_ on the Black Spur, ten miles distant from Healesville, 480 feet high! In the State forest of Dandenong, it was found by actual measurement that an acre of ground contained twenty large trees of an apparent average height of about 350 feet."--R. Brough Smyth, _The Gold Fields of Victoria_. Melbourne, 1869. [29] "In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact. There is nothing in the mind of man that has not pre-existed in nature. Can we imagine a person, who never saw or heard of an elephant, drawing a picture of such a two-tailed creature?"--J. Donelly, _Rangarok_, p. 119. New York, 1883. [30] "I conceive that quite a large proportion of the most profound thinkers are satisfied to exert their memory very moderately. It is, in fact, a distraction from close thought to exert the memory overmuch, and a man engaged in the study of an abstruse subject will commonly rather turn to his book-shelves for the information he requires than tax his memory to supply it."--R. A. Proctor, _Pop. Sci. Monthly_, Jan. 1874.