Indigenous Vegetable Productions. 27 



FIBRES. 



The Victorian and South Australian stringybark tree claims 

 particularly our attention amongst those indigenous plants 

 yielding fibres. The thick fibrous bark, employed by settlers 

 whenever obtainable as their first roof, is devoid of tenacity, 

 but may, as experiments have shown, be employed for the 

 manufacture of a rough kind of paper, although of brittle 

 texture. 



The bark of Sida pulchella, and of various Pimeleas, and of 

 Brachychiton affords to the natives the means of making 

 cordage, but none of these fibres can be compared in yield to 

 those which European culture has now made universally 

 available. 



MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



For investigations into the medicinal properties of plants, a 

 wide field is evidently still open. What we have hitherto 

 learned in this direction has been principally through the 

 guidance of systematic botany, which, whilst it reveals the 

 structural affinities of plants in a comprehensive view, points 

 also generally to the close similarity of their properties. Thus 

 we learn that, for the European gentianeous plants, used so 

 extensively as tonics, Australian species may be substituted, 

 such as the Sebsea ovata, which abounds during the spring in 

 our meadows, or Sebsea albidiflora, an annual plant scattered 

 over the subsaline pastures of the coast tract, or Erythrsea 

 Australis, occurring in humid localities. It appears also that 

 the closely allied order of Goodeniaceae offers, in numerous 

 species, a substitute for gentianeous plants. 



Pervaded with tonic bitterness are also most of the Comes- 

 permas, which in our colony replace the Polygalas. 



The root of Lavatera plebeia has been brought into prac- 

 tical use instead of Althaea. The bark of the well known 

 Australian Sassafras tree is employed as a tonic and stimulant. 

 Its powerful bitterness, probably depending on an alkaloid, 

 is combined with a pleasant peculiar aroma. As this valuable 

 and beautiful tree abounds in many of the ferntree gullies 

 of Victoria, New South Wales, and Tasmania, it is not unlikely, 

 that it will some day, when its medicinal properties are more 

 appreciated abroad, form an article of export from these 

 colonies. 



The numerous diosmaceous plants, which ornament in 

 varied forms almost every part of the colony, from the sum- 

 mit of the alps to the scrubs and forests of the lowlands, 



