616 FOREST CULTURE AND 
for them annually, so all horticultural establishments, 
those formed for trading purposes included, should 
enjoy the universal use of the best index which at the 
time can be compiled. From such standard list local. 
catalogues could be reissued whenever and wherever 
necessary, While each institution may irrespectively 
maintain its standard copy complete for reference to 
the latest day. 
I revert once more to the forming of test planta- 
tions as prominent among the obligations of a scien- 
tific garden. What, for instance, can be more inter- 
esting than a collection of fiber-plants, kept together 
in cultivation, to watch their respective endurance to 
climate, their rate of growth, their required nourish- 
ment, their proportion of yield, or to ascertain the 
strength of their products, the adaptability of the lat- 
ter for various textile fabrics, their mercantile value 
and commercial demand ? 
The subject of fibers is one so large and so moment- 
ous that we might discuss it some evening specially 
in this hall.* A good many kinds of fiber-plants were 
grown experimentally under my direction, and sub- 
jected to various tests, recorded in the documents 
which emanated from the successive great exhibi- 
tions. Some of the results of my experiments on 
strength were given in the descriptive catalogue of 
Victorian sendings to the Sydney Exhibition of last 
year. But such tests must be continued or extended. 
I should, therefore, like to have here under access 
many of the numerous fiber-plants which are not yet 
even known beyond their native countries. The ad- 
*{[n an index published by the Commercial -Indu-trial Mu-eum «f the 
Maison de Mells, nour Ghent, tho peléutide nawes of 550 kinds of plants, 
yielding fextily fiber, are given. 
