PKEFACE. 



V. 



these notes were gathered; they might under less rigorous restric- 

 tions indeed have been indefinitely extended; and although the 

 author for more than twenty years has been watching for industrial 

 tests the plants introduced by him into the Melbourne Botanic Garden, 

 he had still to a very large extent to rely implicitly on the experience 

 of other observers elsewhere. Here also it may at once be stated, 

 that in all instances, when calculations of measurements and 

 weights were quoted, such represent the maximum always, as far 

 as hitherto on record. To draw prominent attention to the pri- 

 marily important among the very many hundreds of plants, 

 referred to in these pages, the leading species have been desig- 

 nated with an asterisk. It has not been easy in numerous instances, 

 to trace the first sources of that information on utiKtarian plants, 

 which we find recorded in the various volumes of phytologic or 

 technologic literature; many original observations are however 

 contained in the writings of Bernardin, Bentley, Brandis, CandoUe, 

 Collins, Drury, Flueckiger, Asa Gray, Grisebach, Hanbury, 

 Hooker, King, Langethal, Lawson, Lindley, Loudon, Martius, 

 Masters, Meehan, Michaux, Nuttall, Oliver, Pereira, Philippi, 

 Porcher, Rosenthal, Seemann, Stewart, Trimen, Wittstein and also 

 some others, to whose names is referred cursorily in the text. The 

 volumes of the Agricultural Department of Washington, of the 

 Austrian Apotheker-Yerein and of several other periodicals have 

 likewise afibrded data utilised on this occasion. 



In grouping together, at the close of this volume, all the genera 

 enumerated, according to the products which they yield, facility is 

 afforded for tracing out any series of plants about which special 

 economic infoimation may be sought, or which may prominently 

 engage at any time the attention of the cultivator, the manu- 

 facturer or the artisan. Again, in placing together in index-form 

 the respective industrial plants according to their geographic dis- 

 tribution, as has likewise been done in the concluding pages, it is 

 rendered easy to order or obtain from abroad the plants of such 

 other countries, with which any one of our colonists may be in rela- 

 tion through commercial, literary or other intercourse. Lists like the 

 present may aid also in naming the plants and their products with 



