146 AUSTRALIAN NATIVE PLANTS. 
order or genus, we can usually make a very sagacious surmise as 
to its properties. The science of botany, therefore, may save the 
student of Materia Medica from groping about and testing plants 
in an empirical way. Nevertheless, there is still much empiricism 
in the study of vegetable Materia Medica, as it is only of 
comparatively recent years that the analyst and physician have 
recognised the enormous mutual advantage of co-operation with 
the botanist. Yet comparatively few genera have been tested for 
medicinal properties throughout the world, so that the limit of the 
aid afforded us by analogy is easily passed. 
Australian botany may be said to have been brought into order 
by the publication of the Flora Australiensis, the oldest volumes 
of which only date back some twenty-five years. Before that 
time very few people in these colonies professed any botanical 
knowledge whatsoever, and our plant-nomenclature was in a 
pitiable state, empirics adding to the prevalent lack of knowledge 
by bestowing names on plants without a word of description, 
increasing the difficulty of the situation by synonymy worse than 
useless. Anyone need only examine old exhibition literature to 
be convinced of the truth of my remarks. To Baron Mueller and 
Mr. Bentham are, of course, mainly owing the ‘‘ exact” position 
which Australian botany holds in this centenary year. The main 
work of the classification of our plants has already been performed, 
and the student of Materia Medica now can reap the advantage. 
There is no doubt that many observations of early colonists on the 
medicinal properties of plants have been lost to us through their 
lack of botanical knowledge, or lack of facilities to have plants 
named in which they were interested. And considering the circum- 
stances under which many of the pioneers of this colony worked, it 
becomes a matter of surprise to us, not that they have recorded 
so little, but that they have been recorded so much, and in such 
detail, in regard to the economic properties of our indigenous flora. 
Of course, drugs form but one group or division of substances 
which have been pressed into the service of man. 
In fairness to ourselves we must confess ourselves very little 
indebted to the Australian aboriginal for information as to the 
medical (or in fact any other) properties of our plants. The 
