PEEFACE. Vll 



enced in drawing the limits of the remarks admissible into the 

 present pages, because a certain plant may be important only under 

 particular climatic conditions and cultural applications, or it may 

 have been overrated in regard to the copiousness and relative 

 value of its yield. Thus it was not alway easy to sift the chaff 

 from the grain when these notes were gathered ; they might under 

 less rigorous restrictions indeed have been indefinitely extended; 

 and although the author for more than twenty years has been 

 watching for industrial tests the plants introduced by him into 

 the Melbourne Botanic Garden, he had still to a very large extent 

 to rely implicitly on the experience of other observers elsewhere. 

 Here also it may at once be stated that in all instances when 

 calculations of measurements and weights were quoted, such repre- 

 sent the maximum always, as far as hitherto on record. To draw 

 prominent attention to the primarily important among the very 

 many hundreds of plants referred to in these pages, the leading 

 species have been designated with an asterisk. It has not been 

 easy in numerous instances to trace the first sources of that inform- 

 ation on utilitarian plants which we find recorded in the various 

 volumes of phytologic or technologic literature; many original 

 observations are, however, contained in the writings of Bernardin, 

 Bentley, Brandis, Brockhaus, Candolle, Chambers, Collins, Drury, 

 Flueckiger, Asa Gray, Grisebach, Hanbury, Hooker, King, Lange- 

 thal, Lawson, Lindley, Lorentz, Loudon, Martius, Masters, 

 Meehan, Michaux, Nuttall, Oliver, Pereira, Philippi, Porcher, 

 Eosenthal, Roxburgh, Seemann, Simmonds, Stewart, Trimen, 

 Wittstein, and also some others to whose names reference is made 

 cursorily in the text. The volumes of the Agricultural Department 

 of Washington, of the Austrian Apotheker-Verein, of the Journal 

 of Applied Science, of the Bulletin de la Societe d'Acclimation de 

 France, and of several other periodicals, have likewise afforded data 

 utilised on this occasion. 



In grouping together, at the close of this volume, all the genera 

 enumerated, according to the products which they yield, facility is 

 afforded for tracing out any series of plants about which special 

 economic information may be sought, or which may prominently 



