iv Preface. 



yield. It was, therefore, not always easy, to " sift the chaff from the 

 grain," when these notes were gathered ; the remarks, offered in 

 this work, might indeed under less rigorous restrictions have been 

 indefinitely extended ; and although the author has for more than 

 twenty years been watching for industrial tests the plants, introduced 

 by him into the Melbourne Botanic Garden, and has for nearly as 

 long a time of travels been scrutinising the circumstances of the 

 spontaneous occurrence for vast multitudes of species, he had still to 

 a very large extent to rely implicitly on the experience of other 

 observers elsewhere. It may also at once be stated here, that when 

 calculations of measurements and data of weights were quoted, such 

 always represent, if not already anyhow absolute, the maximum as 

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

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

 brief terms, as even some of the best and newest taxologic books on 

 plants relate not with sufficient distinctness, what is truly indigenous 

 and what merely naturalised in any particular part of the globe. 

 Furthermore schematic indices, to facilitate general views over the 

 geographic distribution of plants, such as given for Australia in "a 

 systematic census of plants with geographic and literary annota- 

 tions," have not as yet been forthcoming for any of the other great 

 divisions of the earth with completeness, although Nyman has pub- 

 lished a full list of European plants with mentioning of the countries 

 of their nativity there. 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 found easy in numerous instances, to trace the original 

 source of whatever information on utilitarian plants we find recorded 

 in the various volumes of phytographic or rural or technologic 

 literature ; many original observations are however contained in the 

 writings, accessible here, of Bernardin, Bentham, Bentley, Boehner, 

 Brandis, Brockhaus, Candolle, Chambers, Collins, Drury, Engelmann, 

 Engler, Flueckiger, Fraas, Groeze, Asa Gray, Grisebach, Haiibury, 

 Hilgard, Hooker, Husemann, King, Koch, Langethal, Lawson, 

 Lindley, Lorentz, Loudon, Maiden, Martius, Masters, Meehan, Meyer, 

 Michaux, Naudin, Nuttall, Oliver, Pereira, Philippi, Porcher, Rosen- 

 thai, Roxburgh, Sargent, Seemann, Semler, Simmonds, Stewart, 

 Trimen, Wiesner, Wittstein and others, to whose names reference is 



