vi Preface. 



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, regarding which special 

 economic or technic information may be sought, or which may at any- 

 time prominently engage the attention of the cultivator, the manu- 

 facturer or the artisan. Again, by placing together in index-form 

 the respective industrial plants according to their geographic dis- 

 tribution, as has likewise been done in the concluding pages, it is 

 rendered easy, to order or obtain from abroad the plants of such other 

 countries, with which any settlers or colonists may be in relation, 

 through commercial, literary or other intercourse. Lists like the 

 present may also help in naming plants and their products with 

 scientific correctness in establishments of economic horticulture or 

 for technologic or other educational collections. If the line of de- 

 marcation between the plants, admissible into this list, and those, 

 which should have been excluded, has occasionally been extended in 

 favour of the latter, then it must be pleaded, that the final value of 

 any particular species for a peculiar want, locality or treatment can- 

 not always be fully foretold. Doubtless, many plants of primary 

 importance for rural requirements, here again alluded to, have long 

 since been secured even for new colonies by intelligent early pioneers 

 of immigration, who timely strove to enrich the cultural resources of 

 their adopted country. In these efforts the writer, so far as his public or 

 private means would permit has endeavoured for more than a third of a 

 century to take an honorable share. But although many such plants may 

 have been introduced, they are not in all instances as yet widely 

 diffused, nor tested in all desirable localities and for all needful 

 purposes ; thus for the sake of completeness even the most ordinary 

 cultural plants have not been passed, as the opportunity seemed also 

 an apt one, to offer some cursory remarks on their respective value. 

 Even the geographic limitation of the work nominally to extra-tropic 

 regions involves a somewhat arbitrary admission or exclusion of those 

 intratropical plants, which occupy cooler mountain-regions, and those 

 which extend even from low lands almost within the equinoctial 

 zones fully to both tropical circles of geographic demarcation. An 

 armfull of hay or straw may help in any a tender seedling over the 

 first cool season, or a bit of brush may shelter infant-plants against 

 scorching in the first summer. In fact, a work like this can pass only 



