BEIEF REMARKS AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE MAIN- WORK WITH ITS 



TENTH DECADE. 



Although at least two more decades are needed, to complete mainly the specific records of 

 all existing Eucalypts, it is deemed best by the author of this work, to provide indices and a 

 synopsis of the characteristics of the species now already. The reasons are obvious ; among the 

 20-30 kind s of Encalypts, yet to be illustrated, none seems to hold out a promise of becoming of 

 superior technic importance; their specific demarcation moreover can in most cases not yet be 

 drawn with completeness and accuracy for want either of sufiicient museum-material, or of 

 opportunities to study their characteristics further in culture or in free nature. Moreover the ' 

 Eucalypts, which remain yet to be dealt with, are mostly restricted to widely distant and as yet 

 hardly accessible localities, and may even not become all well elucidated during the remaining 

 years of this century. But by the time, at which the specific records as a mere basis or frame- 

 work for industrial researches shall have been completed, vast access also will have been gained 

 through trial - cultures, therapeutic application, laboratory - analyses, engineering tests and 

 handicraft-exertions to those data, which the author has endeavoured, concerning the great genus 

 Eucalyptus, to collect into the present ten decades ; hence ample additional material, the 

 acquirement of which may indeed extend, to an almost indefinite period, is sure to accumulate for 

 supplemental pages and plates, or perhaps for recasting the whole monography. A hope is 

 however entertained, that by issuing some new portion of this work ere long, various important 

 supplemental notes may at no distant day be connectedly gathered on species, which appeared in 

 the earlier decades. Thus already the large treatise by Prof. Charles Naudin on the very 

 numerous kinds of Eucalypts, raised by that highly scientific ruralist in the famous garden of the 

 Ville Thuret near Antibes and traced there from the embryonic state to the fuU development of 

 each specific form, will afford important data, as rendered known in the Annales des Sciences 

 naturelles of this year. The medical periodicals of all civilized nations bring also more and 

 more therapeutic notices on the various Eucalypts, which information needs to be connectedly 

 utilized for fature pages of this or any other Monography of the genus ; and in accomplishing 

 this, we will be again reminded by an enlightened and venerable American of the scriptural words : 

 " The leaves of the tree shall be for the healing of the nations" (Revelat. xxii. 5). Extensive 

 plantations, assuming in many a country both of the northern and southern hemisphere now 

 already forestral dimensions, give rise likewise to more varied application of Eucalyptus-wood in 

 technology for perhaps early record. A recently commenced splendid issue, " The Forest-Flora 

 of South Australia," by the zealous conservator and generator of woods in a sister-colony, con- 

 tinues to bring new notations before us, none of which appeared in time to be utilized for the 

 Bucalyptography hitherto here. Mr. Hutchins's elaborate comparative measurements of Eucalyp- 

 tus-growth in the Nilgeris, where forest-culture of Eucalypts received, like in many other places 

 abroad, early support from the writer, need corresponding observations in other zones and under 

 different circumstances here and elsewhere. May these brief indications now also show, that the 

 author cannot hope during the remaining probably brief period of his life-time, to complete the 

 present work with some approach to exhaustiveness of the subject, and that it was therefore best 

 to bring it to a temporary conclusion now ; he at the same time well foreseeing, that the Eucalypts 

 are destined, to play a prominent part for all times to come in the silvan culture of vast tracts of 

 the globe, and that for hardwood-supplies, for sanitary measures and for beneficient climatic 

 changes all countries within the warmer zones will with appreciable extensiveness have to rely 

 on our Eucalypts during an as yet uncountable future ! 



