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Matchless orchids clung to the trees, and the delicate maiden-hair fern held its own with the hardier varieties. Dusky fir-trees, groups of Australian araucarias, and Japanese oak trees and chestnuts set off the brightness of the flower beds.
All the houses that had sprung up round Lake Wendouree had well-stocked spreading grounds; but Ocock's outdid the rest. The groom opening a pair of decorative iron gates which were the showpiece of the neighbourhood, Mahony turned in and drove past exotic firs, Moreton Bay fig-trees and araucarias; past cherished English hollies growing side by side with giant cacti.
He planted long avenues of the rarest and finest trees, araucarias, Scotch firs, oaks, beeches, cedars of Lebanon; laid out miles of the most varied and delightful drives, and built the most extensive conservatories in Ireland. The turfed and terraced walks among those conservatories are indescribably lovely, and the whole place to-day was vocal with innumerable birds.
They could hear from somewhere on the margin the purl of a weir, and around were clumps of shrubs, araucarias and deodars being the commonest. Ethelberta could not resist being charmed with the repose of the spot, and hastened on with curiosity to reach the other side of the pool, where, by every law of manorial topography, the mansion would be situate.
If any one will look at the trees and shrubs growing in the grounds about such a house, chosen at random for an example, and make a list of them, he may then go round the entire circumference of Greater London, mile after mile, many days' journey, and find the list ceaselessly repeated. There are acacias, sumachs, cedar deodaras, araucarias, laurels, planes, beds of rhododendrons, and so on.
Deposits of the period at Bournemouth and in the Isle of Wight tell the same story of a land that bore figs, vines, palms, araucarias, and aralias, and waters that sheltered turtles and crocodiles. The Parisian region presented the same features.
Professor Agassiz remarks that the rest of this tropical forest is as interesting to the geologist as to the botanist, as it reveals to him its relation to the vegetable world of past ages, showing those laws of growth which unite the past and the present. The tree-ferns the chamaerops, the pandanus, the araucarias are modern representatives of past types.
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