COLONIAL FLORAS. 257 



fcaining all that is known of their vegetable productions. In his an- 

 nual Reports to Parliament on the progress of the Garden and the 

 utility of the Museum, Herbarium and Library, as well as in his corre- 

 spondence with various Secretaries of State for the Colonies, the Direc- 

 tor of Kew Gardens has officially called attention to his opinion (an 

 opinion that has never been disputed) that it is a duty of the depart- 

 ment under his control, to provide all materials and facilities for con- 

 ducting such works efficiently ; adding, that the want of them is the 

 chief obstacle towards developing the productive resources of the 

 colonies, and furthering a scientific knowledge of their vegetation and 

 taste for its study ; and that they are indispensable for supplying 

 that fixed nomenclature for their plants, without which it is impos- 

 sible for himself or the colonists to carry on a correspondence on these 

 and kindred subjects. 



Nor are other reasons wanting ; as the colonies increase in extent 

 and wealth, an upper class of settlers is evolved, whose intelligence 

 and education alike stimulate them to obtain a knowledge of the 

 plants of their native or adopted country, and who, appreciating the 

 value of a scientific training in developing the reasoning and observing 

 faculties, desire that their children should possess the means of being 

 thus trained in nature's school. Further, as the attractions of these 

 new provinces increase, and facilities for visiting them become greater, 

 many well educated men, travellers, tourists, and Government 

 servants, leave our shores for a temporary sojourn in the colonies, 

 and desire to take with them a suitable Flora. JSTor are practical 

 illustrations wanting of the loss we have suffered through ignorance 

 of our colonial productions, for it is a fact well known to exhibitors 

 and jurors, that a large proportion of the new and little known veget- 

 able products of the British foreign possessions, which were sent to 

 the Great Exhibition of 1851, were almost valueless, solely from 

 the want of any means of procuring reliable information concerning 

 them, or of giving them names by which they had already been recog- 

 nized, or could again be known. With regard to the timbers espe- 

 cially, of which the Indian and Colonial series were magnificent, the 

 same wood had sometimes many names in one country, and in the case 

 of the Australian woods, many had a different name in each contiguous 

 colony, or from each exhibitor in the same colony. In many cases the 

 names given were purely arbitrary, originating in a whim or blunder, 

 or in a mistaken idea of the resemblance of the tree producing it to 

 some better known timber tree. 



Something more, however, was required to move the Government 

 to consider the subject, than the officially unsupported representa- 

 tions of a single scientific man ; whose exertions would have met with 

 little success but for the happy accident of a gentleman of scientific 

 attainments, in fact an excellent botanist, holding, for a short period, 

 the office of Parliamentary Secretary to the Colonics. This was 

 Mr. J. Ball, than whom no one better knew how much was wanted, 

 .and how much might be effected by a little timely aid from Govern- 



