Preface. vii 



remarks, offered in these pages, might indeed under less rigorous restric- 

 tions have been indefinitely extended; and although the author has for 

 more than twenty years been watching for industrial tests the plants, intro- 

 duced 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. It may also be at once here stated, that when calculations 

 of measurements and weights were quoted, such always represent the 

 maximum as far as hitherto on record. It was not always found easy, to 

 fix with accuracy the geographic range of the species for this work in 

 concise terms, as even some of the best and newest taxologic works 

 relate not with sufficient distinctness; what is truly indigenous and what 

 merely naturalized in any particular part of the globe. Furthermore 

 schematic indices, to facilitate general views over the geographic dis- 

 tribution of plants, such as given for Australia in " a systematic census 

 of plants with geographic and literary annotations " have not been yet 

 forthcoming for any of the other great divisions of the earth with 

 completeness. 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 original source of that informa- 

 tion on utilitarian plants, which we find recorded in the various volumes 

 of phytologic or rural or technologic literature ; many original observa- 

 tions are however contained in the writings of Bernardin, Bentham, 

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

 Engelmann, Engler, Flueckiger, Fraas, Freyn, Asa Gray, Grisebach, 

 Hanbury, Hooker, King, Koch, Langethal, Lawson, Lindley, Lorentz, 

 London, Martius, Masters, Meehan, Meyer, Michaux, Naudin. Nuttall, 

 Oliver, Pereira, Philippi, Porcher, Eosenthal, Roxburgh, Sargent, 

 Seemann, Simmonds, Stewart, Trimen, Witfstein and others, to whose 

 names reference is cursorily made in the text. The volumes of the 

 Agricultural Department at Washington, of the Austrian Apotheker- 

 Verein, of the Journal of Applied Science, of the Bulletin de la Societe 

 d'Acclimatation de France and of several other periodicals have likewise 

 afforded data, utilized on this occasion. 



In selecting notes from general rural literature great caution had 

 to be exercised, to guard against being misled by perhaps sometimes 

 faulty nomenclature. Furthermore in choosing or elaborating the data 

 for entries injo this work, it had constantly to be kept in view, that the 

 information is intended for the bread-winning portion of communities in 

 young colonies mainly if not exclusively; nothing beyond this is aimed at. 



