BY J. H. MAIDEN. 357 



Australian botany may be said to have been brought into order 

 by the publication of the Flora Australiensis, the oldest volumes 

 of which only date back some twenty-five years. Before that 

 time very few people in these colonies pi-ofessed any botanical 

 knowledge whatsoever, and our plant-nomenclature was in a 

 pitiable state, empirics adding to the prevalent lack of knowledge 

 by bestowing names on plants without a word of description, 

 increasing the difficulty of the situation by synonymy worse than 

 useless. Anyone need only examine old exhibition literature to 

 be convinced of the truth of my remarks. To Baron Mueller and 

 Mr. Bentham are of course mainly owing the " exact " position 

 which Australian botany holds in this centenary year. The main 

 Avork of the classification of our plants has already been performed, 

 and the student of Materia Medica now can reap the advantage. 

 There is no doubt that many observations of early colonists on the 

 medicinal properties of plants have been lost to us through their 

 lack of botanical knowledge, or lack of facilities to have plants 

 named in which they were interested. And considering the 

 circumstances under which many of the pioneers of this colony 

 worked, it becomes a matter of surprise to us, not that they have 

 recorded so little, but that they have been recorded so much, and 

 in such detail, in regard to the economic properties of our indi- 

 genous flora. Of course drugs form but one group or division of 

 substances which have been pressed into the service of man. 



In fairness to ourselves we must confess ourselves very little 

 indebted to the Australian aboriginal for information as to the 

 medical (or in fact any other) properties of our plants. The 

 poor aboriginal chiefly takes interest in the vegetation as supplying 

 him with his scanty food, or as affording him fibre useful in 

 securing tish and other animal sustenance. As far as we know, the 

 Materia Medica of the blacks is of a very meagre description, yet 

 the acquisition of even such little knowledge as they are supposed 

 to possess, has been slow and difficult, inasmuch as persons who 

 have lived in a state of nature with them have not been 

 distinguished for either their medical or botanical knowledge. 

 Civilised or semi-civilised blacks frequently know but little about 



