592 FOREST CULTURE AND 
at any time or place may be at command. The total 
of Australian Dicotyledones hitherto ascertained to 
exist is 6,500; and although, in some instances, the 
supposed species will collapse, there will be also some 
compensating access from new discoveries. The num- 
ber of Monocotyledonez is also comparatively great. 
Should we not largely surround ourselves with our 
own native plants, handsome and instructive as they 
are? The range of cultivation in our state garden 
has, at times, been already extensive. In 1865, seeds 
were collected of 700 species of trees and shrubs in 
the garden; seeds also of 170 kinds of grasses, of 
1100 herbaceous plants, and of 80 species of ferns. 
Many of the species thus raised became also amply 
dispersed. It is not too much to affirm that, during 
the many years of my directorial administration of our 
young establishment, hardly a day has passed with- 
out some industrial plant having been distributed, 
and information on its rearing and uses having been 
afforded. The increasing population demands increas- 
ed attention. I have just spoken of the thousands of 
native plants, recorded in volumes of our own; they 
gained at least a share of their contents from locally- 
cultivated plants. Let me ask whether we should not ~ 
find the principal plants of our own continent brought 
before us in cultivation, for systematic as well as 
other studies? They are, indeed, excellent indi- 
eators of clime, of geographic features and geologic 
structure. You all have heard, for instance, of the 
Polygonum swamps, so often referred to in the works 
on Australian exploration. Assuredly it is of interest 
to possess in a botanic garden the tall, wiry bush, which 
occupies, in intricate masses, the clayey mud-flats of 
