465 



2.— INTRODUCTION. 



(a) Botanical. 



The systematic side of the South Australian Eucalypts 

 has received a fair amount of attention at the hands of 

 botanists, and the "Census" of Professor Tate in Transactions 

 of the Royal Society of South Australia, 1889, p. 93, leaves 

 little to be desired up to that date. No special work, how- 

 ever, has been published on the economics of these Eucalypts, 

 especially as regards the chemistry of their essential oils, and 

 it is these desiderata that form the main object of this paper. 



The species are arranged according to the plan laid down 

 in our work, "A Research on the Eucalypts and their Essen- 

 tial Oils," Sydney, 1902. It may be stated that those species 

 occurring in the Northern Territory are not included in this 

 list. 



A few alterations from Tate's list are as follows : — 

 E. albens, E. calycogona, E. elaeophora, E. Bosistoana, 

 E. Lansdowniana , and E. acervula are added, whilst E. 

 ■amygdalina, E. pamculata, E. goniocalyx, E. Stuartiana, 

 E. Giinnii, E. Sieberiana are omitted, as there is not suffi- 

 cient evidence forthcoming of their occurrence in South 

 Australia. 



The number of Eucalypts recorded for South Australia 

 falls much short cf those for the other States, except perhaps 

 Tasmania, a fact probably due to its geographical position in 

 regard to the main mountain ranges of the continent, where 

 the species are found to be more numerous. The species show 

 perhaps a closer botanical connection with those of Victoria 

 and Tasmania than of other contiguous States, while the 

 greatest differences exist between them and those of New 

 South Wales and Western Australia. What may be regarded 

 as the introductory group of the genus Eucalyptus — the 

 "Bloodwoods" — is practically unrepresented, and this fact 

 again illustrates the argument which was advanced by us in 

 a paper on the Victorian Eucalypts (Reports, A.A.A.S., vol. 

 xiv., p. 296-7) concerning the period of development of the 

 Eucalypts in Australia. Although the most numerous group 

 of the South Australian Eucalypts is the "Mallee," even 

 this numbers less than a dozen species, probably due to the 

 greater uniformity^ of the topographical features from those 

 of the neighbouring States. 



The next largest group is the "Gums," and here we have 

 a very interesting specimen, E. acervula, which was originally 

 described from Tasmania, and is now shown for the first time 

 to also occur on the mainland. On morphological grounds it 

 has previously, in South Australia, gone under the name of 



