Preface. iii 



strawberries and others of our most relishable table or kitchen-fruits, 

 partly arisen from quite unpromising stock. Furthermore as methodic 

 forestry is as yet limited everywhere to indigenous kinds of trees, 

 except in India and at the Mediterranean Sea, where Eucalypts much 

 through initiating early efforts of the writer became reared on a 

 forestral scale, it may be presumed, that the present pages will also 

 aid in vastly amplifying forest-operations by transfers of peculiarly 

 superior kinds of sylvan trees from hemispheres to hemispheres in a 

 truly cosmopolitan spirit, so far as this can be carried out within 

 climatic scope, renewal and even originating of forests becoming any- 

 how so needful in many regions of the world. In numerous instances 

 the author has preferred to quote the statements of others on the 

 value of various culture-plants, than advancing opinions from his own 

 experience, even when they were quite coinciding ; but in most cases 

 such notes had to be much abridged, to render the volume concise, 

 readily portable, quite inexpensive and quickly useable. 



As already intimated, the rapid progress of tillage almost through- 

 out all colonial dominions and in other new States is causing a 

 growing desire for general and particular indications of such plants, 

 which a colder clime excludes from the northern countries, in which 

 many of the colonists spent their youth ; and it must be clear to any 

 reflecting mind, that in all warmer latitudes, as compared with the 

 Middle-European region, is existing a vastly enlarged scope for cul- 

 tural choice of plants. Thus, indicative as these notes merely are, 

 they may yet facilitate the selection. More extensive information 

 can then be sought for in larger and expensive, though less compre- 

 hensive and handy works already extant, or likely still to be called 

 forth by local requirements in other countries. The writer should 

 even not be disinclined under fair support and encouragement, to 

 issue collateral to the present volume also another, exclusively devoted 

 to the industrial plants of the hotter zones, for the promotion of 

 tropical culture, particularly in our Australian continent. 



Considerable difficulty was experienced in fixing the limits 01 such 

 remarks, as are at all admissible into the present pages, because 

 certain plants may be important only under particular climatic con- 

 ditions and cultural applications, or their importance may have been 

 overrated in regard to the copiousness and relative value of their 



