Vi PREFACE. 



* 



far more narrow than that of the colony for which these pages 

 originally were mostly written. Only a few of the books which 

 it was desirable to consult were at my command; hence the 

 necessity of successive further supplements, even irrespective of 

 needful references to future discoveries, because in the progress 

 of geographic, medical, technologic, and chemical inquiries many 

 new plants of utilitarian value are likely to be disclosed, and new 

 uses of known plants to be elucidated. Thus, for instance, among 

 the trees and shrubs or herbs and grasses occurring in the middle 

 and higher altitudinal zones of Africa, or nearer to us of New 

 Guinea and the Sunda Islands, many specific forms may be expected 

 to occur, which we could transfer to other extra- tropical countries 

 or to mountains in equinoctial regions. Indeed, the writer would 

 modestly hope that his local efforts may prove to be of usefulness 

 also in other parts of the globe, and in this hope he is cheered by the 

 generous action of an enlightened American, Mr. Ellwood Cooper, 

 the Principal of the Santa Barbara College of California, who 

 deemed the publications, first offered for Australian use, also 

 worthy of reissue in America. Moreover, gradual or partial reprints 

 appeared also in weekly journals of Sydney and San Francisco 

 and some other periodicals. It was stated before that the rapid 

 progress of tillage almost throughout all colonial dominions is 

 causing more and more a desire for general and particular indica- 

 tions of such plants, which a colder clime excludes from the north- 

 ern countries, where many of the colonists spent their youth ; and 

 it must be clear to any reflecting mind that in all warmer latitudes, 

 as compared with the Middle-European zones, a vastly enlarged 

 scope exists for cultural choice of plants. Indicative as these notes 

 merely are, yet they may thus facilitate the selection. More exten- 

 sive information can then be followed up in larger works extant 

 elsewhere, or which authorship may call forth for local requirements 

 in other countries. The writer should even not be disinclined, under 

 fair support and encouragement, to issue collateral to the present 

 volume also another, exclusively devoted to the industrial plants of 

 the hotter zones for the promotion of tropical culture, particularly 

 in our Australian continent. Considerable difficulty was experi- 



