PREFACE 



In the volumes, issued by the Victorian Acclimatisation- Society from 

 1871 to 1878, five contributions have appeared concerning such indus- 

 trial 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 introduction and diffusion of the 

 very many kinds of plants, which may be extensively reared in the 

 forests, fields or pastures of temperate geographic latitudes. But the 

 work thus originated 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 was therefore re-arranged and largely supplemented, first for re- 

 issue in Victoria, and lately also in India, under the auspices of the 

 Central Government at Calcutta. Subsequently the work was likewise 

 honored by being reprinted, with numerous additions, for the use of 

 New South Wales; and at nearly the same time it went through a 

 German translation, by Dr. Goeze, in Herr Th. Fischer's publishing 

 establishment in Cassel; while last year it appeared revised and still 

 further augmented, more particularly for North- American use, through 

 the generous interest of one of the most enterprising scientific publishers 

 in the United States, Mr. George Davis of Detroit. The early 

 Victorian edition having become exhausted, the present one is offered 

 now, still further enlarged by such notes as could be made very recently. 

 As stated in the preface to the original essays, they did not claim com- 

 pleteness, either as a specific index to, or as a series of notes on the 

 respective rural or technologic applicability of the plants enumerated. 

 But what these writings may perhaps aspire to, is to bring together 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 generally to countries with a 

 climatic zone far narrower than that, for which these pages were written. 



