Introductory Remarks. v 



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 

 forestal 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 

 anyhow so needful in many regions of the world. Then by diversify- 

 ing more extensively the cultural crops, such occasional failures as of 

 the rice in India, potatoes in Ireland, rye in Russia, would be less felt, 

 and the concomitant famines could be largely averted or iCitigated. 

 Moreover the greater the diversities of culture, the less also the extent 

 of diseases arising from fungs and insects. In numerous instances the 

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

 various culture-plants, than to advance opinions from his own ex- 

 perience, 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 usable. As already 

 intimated, the rapid progress of tillage almost throughout 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 those 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 regions, 

 is existing a vastly enlarged scope for cultural choice of plants. Thus, 

 indicative as these notes merely are, they may yet facilitate selection. 

 More extensive information can then be sought for in larger and 

 expensive, though less comprehensive 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 of such remarks, as are at all admissible into the 

 present pages, because certain plants may be important only under 

 particular climatic conditions and cultural applications, or their im- 

 portance may have been overrated in regard to the copiousness and 



