SOME OF THE POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 637 
The energy shown by Baron von Mueller, the renowned Government 
botanist of Victoria, and by various forest departments, in encourag- 
ing the cultivation of timber trees will assuredly meet with success; 
one can hardly hope that this suecess will appear fully demonstrated 
in the lifetime of those now living, but I can not think that many years 
will pass before the promoters of such enterprises may take fresh 
courage. 
In a modest structure in the city of Sidney, New South Wales, Mr. 
Maiden* has brought together, under great (difficulties, a large collec- 
tion of the useful products of the vegetable kingdom as represented 
in Australia. It is impossible to look at the collection of woods in that 
museum or at the similar and more showy one in Kew, without believ- 
ing that the field of forest culture must receive rich material from the 
Southern Hemisphere. 
Before leaving this part of our subject, it may be well to take some 
illustrations in passing, to show how important is the influence exerted 
upon the utilization of vegetable products by causes which may at first 
strike one as being rather remote: 
(1) Photography makes use of the effect of light on chromatized 
gelatin to produce under a negative the basis of relief plates for en- 
eraving. The degree of excellence reached in modifications of this 
simple device has distinctly threatened the very existence of wood en- 
eraving, and hence follows a diminished degree of interest in box- 
wood and its substitutes. 
(2) Tron, and in its turn steel, is used in shipbuilding, and this ren- 
ders of greatly diminished interest all questions which concern the 
choice of different oaks, and similar woods. 
(3) But on the other hand there is increased activity im certain di- 
rections, best illustrated by the extraordinary development of the 
chemical methods for manufacturing wood pulp. By the improved 
processes, strong fibers suitable for fine felting on the screen and fit 
for the best grades of certain lines of paper are given to us from rather 
inferior sorts of wood. He would be arash prophet who should venture 
to predict what will be the future of this wonderful industry, but it is 
plain that the time is not far distant when acres now worthless may be 
covered by trees under cultivation, growing for the pulp-maker. 
There is no department of economic botany more promising in im- 
mediate results than that of arboriculture. 
V.—VEGETABLE FIBERS. 
The vegetable fibers known to commerce are either plant hairs, of 
which we take cotton as the type, or filaments of bast-tissue, repre- 
sented by flax. No new plant hairs have been suggested which can 
compete in any way for spinning with those yielded by the species of 
* Useful Native Plants of Australia. 
