ies FOREST CULTURE AND 
Many other cultural resources of forests are as yet 
very inadequately recognized. The dye-saffron might 
be grown as much for amusement as for the sake of its 
pretty flowers, just as an ordinary bulb, wherever ju- 
venile gatherers can be had. Equally lucrative might 
be made the culture of another plant, the medicinal 
colchicum, a gay Autumnal flowering bulb worthy of 
a place in any garden. In apt forest spots both would 
become naturalized. Amidst the forests, in the glens 
which skirt the very base of alpine mountains, on the 
M’ Allister River, opium was produced without any toil, 
almost as a play-work, to the value of £30, from an 
acre. Mr. Bosisto, who, on that particular locality, 
called forth this industry, found on analysis that the. 
Gipps Land opium proved one of the most powerful 
on record, ten one hundredths of morphia being its 
yield. Small samples of opium prepared in the Mel- 
bourne Botanic Garden were exhibited some years ago 
at the International Exhibition. The Hon. John Hood, 
of this city, promoted much the opium industry in 
this country by the extensive distribution of seeds of 
the Smyrna poppy ; he found the yield here, in favor- 
able seasons and by careful operation, to be from forty 
to fifty pounds on an acre, worth at present thirty to 
thirty - five shillings per pound. The value of the 
opium imported into Victoria during 1870, according 
to customs returns, was £150,681. The banks of many a 
forest brook, and the slopes within reach of irrigation 
from springs, might, doubtless, in numerous instances, 
be converted into profitable hop-fields, the yield of hops 
in Gipps Land having proved very rich. Mr. A. M. 
M’Leod obtained, in one instance, fifteen hundred 
pounds of hops from an acre of ground at Bairnsdale, 
