EUCALYPTUS TREES. 599 
whether medicinal or chemical, whether technological 
orrural. Information by these means will necessarily 
exercise its influence in a professional department, 
and the reflex of this influence will be the diffusion 
of special knowledge in a manner best adapted to the 
requirements of time and place. So far, the path 
seems clear enough, yet grave obstacles may arise to 
impede or frustrate the progress ; the means of an in- 
stitution may be quite unproportionate to the ever- 
increasing demands made on it, and the whole of an 
establishment may suffer in the inadequate struggle. 
Natural difficulties may supervene, occasional droughts 
or floods may imperil or destroy the work of years. 
There may not even be water from inexpensive sourc- 
es to irrigate arid declivities, or to convert rocks into 
spots of fertility. Quiet, unostentatious arrangements 
may in many other ways be marred, not to speak of 
the impossibility of coping with the elements. Well- 
matured plans, involving years of preliminary action, 
may become suddenly overthrown ; and the detriment 
thus sustained is then not only one of the institution 
itself, but one of whole communities, or perhaps even 
of science at large. 
Unfortunately, it isnot everywhere that the origi- 
nator of a horticultural institution for botanic purposes 
can exercise his judgment in the choice of the area ; 
he finds it, as a rule, selected beforehand, and to the 
advantages of ready access of the multitude most 
other eonsiderations have to give way. In an ideal 
perfectness of a botanic garden we would seek to pos- 
sess the utmost diversity of soil—from the heath- 
moors to sand-drifts, and from rich clays to humus 
deposits ; and we would wish to have within our reach 
