Preface. 



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The economics of the Australian Pines have long been a subject of inquir}- by many- 

 Museum correspondents, and it was to ascertain the extent of the commercial 

 possibilities of these trees that this research was undertaken. 



The collection of so much material upon which the results are founded, 

 necessarily extended o\'er a number of years, but the time taken for these investi- 

 gations has been much longer than we could ha\'e wished ; for in addition to 

 carrying on this work, the ordinary routine duties of the Museum have taken up 

 most of the official hours, so that we had to encroach largelv upon our private 

 time. 



To arrive at the economic results now offered for industrial appUcation, 

 it was, of course, necessary that pure science should be made the foundation upon 

 which all the superstructure could be built, and, hence, this portion of the work 

 forms a large part of the whole ; for pure and applied science are largely interdepen- 

 dent, and it is only by such an association that satisfactory results can be 

 obtained. 



This research, as in our work on the Eucalypts, has been a combined one, 

 in that, botany, in its various branches of morphology, anatomy, physiology', &c., 

 has been linked with chemistry j and naturally so, we think, for it is only thus 

 that affinities and differences can be ascertained with the greatest degree of 

 accuracy. 



The coalescing of these two sciences characterises the whole scheme of 

 these investigations. 



The material upon which these results have been obtained is preserved in 

 this ^luseum for reference and use of future students and workers. 



The skill of the botanical draughtsman has not been laid under tribute on 

 this occasion, as most of the plants and their parts, requiring to be illustrated, were 

 too fine for pencil work, so that wdth one or two exceptions the aid of photography- 

 was requisitioned for the illustrations, and in this way nature itself has been more 

 faithfully reproduced. 



In order to more particularly differentiate the respective plant tissues in 

 some cases, than that obtainable by ordinary black and white photographs, the 

 modern process of natural colour photography has been employed. As this method 

 of reproducing micro-sections of plants is comparatively- new, some little difficulty^ 

 was experienced at first, but soon overcome, and now the results, we think, justify 

 our venturesomeness in this direction, for by careful manipulation on the part of the 



