Austral English / A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia

by Edward Ellis Morris

"The wood is well known in England by the names of Botany Bay wood, or beef wood.The grain is very peculiar, but the wood is thought very little of in the colony; it makes good shingles, splits, in the colonial phrase, from heart to bark . . ."

1833. C. Sturt, `Southern Australia,' vol. i. c. i. p. 22:

"They seemed to be covered with cypresses and beef-wood."

1846. C. Holtzapffel, `Turning,' vol. i. p. 74:

"Beef wood. Red-coloured woods are sometimes thus named, but it is generally applied to the Botany-Bay oak."

1852. G. C. Munday, `Our Antipodes' (edition 1855), p. 219:

"A shingle of the beef-wood looks precisely like a raw beef-steak."

1856. Capt. H. Butler Stoney, `A Residence in Tasmania,' p. 265:

"We now turn our attention to some trees of a very different nature, <i>Casuarina stricta</i> and <i>quadrivalvis</i>, commonly called He and She oak, and sometimes known by the name of beef-wood, from the wood, which is very hard and takes a high polish, exhibiting peculiar maculae spots and veins scattered throughout a finely striated tint . . ."

1868. Paxton's `Botanical Dictionary,' p. 116: