108 FOREST CtJIiTUBE AND 



Many other cultural resources of forests are as yet 

 very inadequately recognized. The dye-saflfron might 

 be grown as much for amusement as for the sake of its 

 pretty flowers, just as an ordinary bulb, wherever ju. 

 venile gatherers can be had. Equally lucrative might 

 be made the culture of another plant, the medicinal 

 colchicum, a gay Autumnal flowering bulb worthy of 

 a place in any garden. In apt forest spots both would 

 become naturalized. Amidsf the forests, in tfie glens 

 which skirt the very base of alpine mountains, on the 

 M' Allister River,opium was produced without any toil, 

 almost as a play-work, to the value of £30, from an 

 acre. Mr. Bosisto, who, on that particular locality, 

 called forth this industry, found on analysis that Ihe 

 Gipps Land opium proved one of the most powerful 

 on record, ten one hundredths of morphia being its 

 yield. Small samples of opium prepared in the Mel- 

 bourne Botanic Garden were exhibited some years ago 

 at the International Exhibition. The Hon. John Hood, 

 of this city, promoted much the opium industry in 

 this country by the extensive distribution of seeds of 

 the Smyrna poppy ; he found the yield here, in favor- 

 able seasons and by careful operation, to be from forty 

 to fifty pounds on an acre, worth at present thirty to 

 thirty -five shillings per pound. The value of the 

 opium imported into Victoria during 1870, according 

 to customs returns, was £150,681. The banks of many a 

 forest brook, and the slopes within reach of irrigation 

 from springs, might, doubtless, in numerous instances, 

 be converted into profitable hop-fields, the yield of hops 

 in Gipps Land having proved very rich. Mr. A. M. 

 M'Leod obtained, in one instance, fifteen hundred 

 pounds of hops from an acre of ground at Baimsdale. 



