18 H. G. SMITH. 
skill and perseverance which have made modern organic 
chemistry such a splendid consummation ? 
It is, perhaps, to be regretted that the prosecution of 
pure science, in many directions, is now so largely dependent 
upon the commercial aspect, and that the idea of carrying 
on scientific work for the pure love of it, regardless of all 
monetary considerations, is so rapidly becoming obsolete. 
But nevertheless whatever may be the stimulus to scientific 
effort the results are the same, and all tend, in one direc- 
tion or another, to the betterment of human conditions. 
In Australia the circumstances are such that the tendency 
is to devote larger effort to the investigation and discrim- 
ination of economic material; but even so, the opportunity 
for deeper study is also present, and it is desirable that the 
relations of trees to their environment, the influences which 
have enabled certain forms to survive adverse conditions, 
the development of species and distribution of particular 
genera, and the reasons for predominance of certain struc- 
tural characters, so pronounced throughout the members 
of some groups, should be more deeply investigated. It is 
upon the results of experimental work that we may hope 
to establish these broader generalisations, and in this 
direction those from chemical research would be perhaps 
the most helpful. The discrimination between species 
alone, if this be the object of the work, may be considered 
as the least valuable of all these investigations, as such 
decisions, when so restricted, do not enable us to under- 
stand the general causes which have been responsible for 
generic structural differences. 
The work so far carried out in this way with the Callitris 
of Australia has added to the knowledge of the general 
characters of the group, and this result was largely made 
possible by the co-ordination of the results of both botanical 
and chemical investigations. The peculiarities of the genus 
