INTRODUCTION. 5 



is not only scientifically but also technologically interested. The limits to be assigned 

 to a work such as an Eucalyptography, supposed to serve industrial and forestral as 

 well as scientific purposes, have been the subject of much meditation of the author. 

 Practically there is no limit to a work of this kind, particularly when it is remembered, 

 that the Eucalypts form the principal timber-vegetation nearly all over the wide 

 Australian continent, and that for all ages the inhabitants of this portion of the globe 

 will have to rely largely if not mainly on Eucalypts for wood-supply, not to speak of 

 what other nations are doing and likely to do with our trees elsewhere. In adopting 

 for the gradual appearance of this work an unconstrained issue, it becomes possible, to 

 add to the text of any species, whenever in the progress of discoveries or of experi- 

 ments new data may require to be recorded, by merely inserting additional independent 

 pages or even plates. Through these remarks it may at once be explained, why in 

 some instances fuller details on particular utilitarian qualities, possessed by some of 

 the leading Eucalypts, are even reserved for a future period. To render records on 

 the industrial value of any woods really reliable for timber-merchants or artisans or 

 industrial exhibitors, any single experiments are of little avail ; only from numerous 

 tests even of the same kind of wood, obtained at different seasons and from distinct 

 localities, can general conclusions be drawn as regards the specific properties of one 

 sort of timber in comparison to the greater or lesser merits of others. For resuming 

 such tests on an extensive scale, it is hoped, renewed facilities will early arise by the 

 restoration ,of the laboratory-accommodation and requisite apparatus, all completely 

 withdrawn from the Government Botanist's department, with many other indispensable 

 auxiliaries, some years ago. The needful provision, established by the writer in 

 former years, enabled him then also to commence to place the potash, oils, tars, acids, 

 dyes, tans and other products and educts from Eucalypts before the industrial world 

 at the universal exhibitions. For ascertaining the relative ratio of growth of the 

 Eucalyptus-trees, their dependence on particular soils, their adaptability to various 

 technologic purposes and many other objects of general interest, connected with this 

 remarkable kind of vegetation, a scientific observer should also not be left aidless in 

 withholding from his control an extensive collection of growing trees, such as the 

 writer during twenty years had brought gradually together for his continual observa- 

 tions from almost all parts of Australia. Observant rural colonists as well as travellers 

 in any portion of Australia could much advance a thorough knowledge of the 

 Eucalypts by securing for the writer of these pages some leafy branchlets with 

 flowerbuds, expanded flowers and ripe fruits of any species of Eucalyptus within then: 

 range of observation, accompanied whenever it can be done by notes on the geologic 

 formation of the places of growth, the aboriginal vernacular, the height of the tree, 

 the peculiarities of the bark and timber of each species, the time of flowering and 

 such other data as may seem of interest. 



