It resists the sea-worm; and our colonial vessels, when hove down for repairs or survey at Sincapore, Launceston, or other ports, have always excited the admiration of the surveyors, and have been pronounced not to require to be coppered. This wood is long in the grain, but very close and tough, and not only makes very good planking, but excellent beams, keel-pieces, and many other portions of a ship. Growing without a branch to the height of from fifty to one hundred feet, and from eighteen inches to three feet and upwards in diameter, it excites the admiration of all practical men; and as its properties have been so long tested, and are so generally admitted in the southern hemisphere, it is matter of no less surprise than regret that it should be still unknown in the English markets. Strong prejudice, and the interest of parties connected with the timber-trade in other countries, have served to keep the inexhaustible forests of Western Australia in the obscurity which has hung over them from primeval times. Besides this, although the Jarra wood exists not in other parts of Australia, and is confined to the Western coast alone, timber has been imported to England from New South Wales, and is very little prized there. Timber-merchants, therefore, who confound all the Australian colonies together, as most other people in England do, are willing to believe that the Jarra of Western Australia is the same as the Stringy-bark of New South Wales, and therefore worth little or nothing for ship-building purposes. The experience of seventeen years has proved the contrary. Not only have the valuable qualities of the Jarra been tested in vessels built in the colony, and employed in trading to the neighbouring ports; but men-of-war and merchant ships have been frequently repaired with it, and the wood so employed has always been highly esteemed when subsequently inspected abroad. In the autumn of 1845, the Halifax Packet, a barque of 400 tons, having parted from her anchor in a gale, and drifted ashore, underwent repairs at Fremantle, to the extent of about eleven hundred pounds. On being surveyed at the Port of London on her return home, the new timber, which had never been previously recognized at Lloyd's, though many efforts have been made to obtain that sanction, was allowed to remain in the ship as being perfectly serviceable. The following memorandum was addressed by the Surveyor of Lloyd's to A. Andrews, Esq., a gentleman interested in the welfare of the colony: "The wood used in the repairs of the Halifax Packet at Swan River, appears to answer the purpose very well. It is not found necessary to remove any part thereof. "From the samples which I have seen of Swan River timber, I am of opinion that it will form a very desirable and serviceable wood in ship-building; but this must be regarded as my private opinion, the Society of Lloyd's Register, to which I belong, not having as yet assigned any character to it in their rules.