iv. 



PREFACE. 



the needful reference to future discoveries, because in tlie progress 

 of geographic, medical, technologic and chemical inquiries many new 

 plants of utilitarian value are likely to be disclosed, and new uses 

 of known plants to be elucidated. Thus, for instance, among the 

 trees and shrubs, or herbs and grasses occurring in the middle and 

 higher altitudinal zones of Africa, or nearer to us of New Guinea 

 and the Sunda Islands, many specific forms may be expected to 

 occur, which we could transfer as well to our colony as to other 

 extra-tropic countries. Indeed, the writer would modestly hope, 

 that his local efforts may prove to be of usefulness also to other 

 countries outside of the tropics; and in this hope he is cheered by 

 the generous action of an enlightened American, Mr. Ellwood 

 Cooper, the Principal of the Santa Barbara College of California, 

 who deemed the publications, now here reprinted for Australian 

 use, also worthy of reissue in America. It was stated before, 

 that the rapid progress of tillage almost throughout our colonial 

 dominion is causing more and more a desire for general and parti- 

 cular indications of such plants, which a colder cKme excludes 

 from the northern countries, where many of our colonists spent 

 their youth ; and it must be clear to any reflecting mind, that in 

 our latitudes as compared with the Middle European zones a 

 vastly enlarged scope exists for cultural choice of plants. In- 

 dicative as these notes merely are, yet they may thus facilitate 

 the selection. More extensive information can then be followed 

 up in larger works extant elsewhere, or which Australian author- 

 ship may call forth for local requirements. The writer should 

 even not be disinclined, under fair support and encouragement,, to 

 issue collateral to the present volume also another, exclusively 

 devoted to the industrial plants of the hotter zones for the pro- 

 motion of tropical culture, particularly in our Australian con- 

 tinent. Considerable difficulty was experienced in drawing the 

 limits of the remarks admissible into the present pages, because a 

 certain plant may be important only under particular climatic 

 conditions and cultural applications, or it may have been over- 

 rated in regard to the copiousness and relative value of its yield. 

 Thus it was not always easy to sift the chaff from the grain, when 



