596° FOREST CULTURE AND 
ed, and this in a manner more pleasing than in most 
other forms, just as numismatic collections are among 
the most lucid and impressive exponents of both his- 
tory and geography, irrespective of ethnologic and 
linguistic researches ; so much so that coin cabinets, 
as auxiliaries for superior teaching, should not be 
wanting in any leading pedagogic establishment. 
A few plants speak often more strikingly for the 
nature of a country than a mass of pages of descrip- 
tive explanation ; or a handful of flowering branches 
gathered on an unknown shore indicate often at once 
capabilities for rural productiveness and settlement. 
No less important is the relation of plants to geol- 
ogic structure and climatic conditions, and we must 
insist on the collateral study of all these branches of 
discipline in the true spirit of the great writer of Cos- 
mos, if we wish to assign to the knowledge of plants 
its true value. Only within the last weeks it fell to 
my lot to demonstrate, from material placed at my 
disposal by the secretary of the Mining Department, 
that in perished forests, where now the town of Had- 
don stands, deeply buried under superincumbent stra- 
ta, once lived in this very colony a tree, closely resem- 
bling that of the Satinwood of the hottest part of India - 
(Chloroxylon). 
I have heard it often remarked by thoughtful and 
circumspect visitors, when they passed through our 
Botanic Garden, that now, for the first time, they 
had learnt from whence naturally came some partic- 
ular plants, which they had reared for years at their 
dwellings ; or that they had remained until then un- 
aware of the name, or the native locality, or any other 
knvwledge vonverning plants with which they had by 
