PREFACE. 



TN the volumes issued by the Victorian Acclimation Society from 

 -^ 1871 to 1878 five contributions have appeared concerning 

 such industrial plants as are available for culture in extra-tropical 

 countries or in high mountain-regions within the tropics. These 

 writings were mainly offered with a view of promoting the intro- 

 duction and diffusion of the very many kinds of plants which in 

 temperate geographic latitudes may be extensively reared in forests, 

 on fields or pastures. The work thus originated, however, became 

 accessible merely to the members of the Society, while frequent 

 calls arose for these or some similar data not only throughout the 

 Australian communities, but also abroad. The whole has therefore 

 now been reissued in a rearranged and largely supplemented form, 

 and in this instance for use in Upper India under the auspices 

 of the Central Government at Calcutta, which honoured me in 

 reprinting this work with its present numerous additions ; and it 

 devolves on me to add that this reissue met with the ready 

 concurrence of the Honourable Sir Bryan O'Loghlen, Bart., 

 Acting Chief Secretary of Victoria. As stated in the preface 

 to the original essays, they did not claim completeness either 

 as a specific index or as a series of notes on the respective 

 technologic applicability of the plants enumerated. But what 

 these writings perhaps may aspire to is the aim of bringing 

 together, closely arrayed, some condensed data in popular language 

 on all the principal utilitarian plants hitherto known to prosper 

 in extra- tropical zones. Information of this kind is widely scattered 

 through many and often voluminous works in several languages, 

 yet such volumes apply chiefly to countries with a climatic zone 



