PREFACE. 
The decision to issue from time to time, as occasional 
publications, these notes on economic products and plants to 
which the attention of the staff of the Royal Botanic Gardens, 
Kew, might be drawn in the course of ordinary correspondence 
or as the result of particular study, took effect on 1 January, 1887. 
The hope entertained was that these notes might better serve 
the purpose of a new mode of communication to the numerous 
correspondents of Kew in distant parts of the Empire, and be 
of greater advantage to members of the general public interested 
in planting or agricultural business in India and the Colonies than 
the Annual Report on the applications of botanical knowledge 
formerly issued by the establishment. 
The intention which underlay the new publication was 
immediately justified. At first it was proposed to issue the 
Bulletin only occasionally and whenever matter of sufficient 
interest for publication had accumulated. It was, however, at 
once found necessary to publish it regularly and, in deference to 
the suggestion of its readers, to adopt from 1888 onwards a 
which might 1 be relegated information of a pureU lorn \ kind. 
In further deference to the wishes of those to whom the Bulletin 
had proved of service it was decided in 1891 to prepare an index 
to the five yearly volumes published up to December of that year. 
Thereafter each annual volume was provided with a separate 
index until 1896 when, in deference to the desire of its readers, 
a general index was prepared in which were included references 
to all the subjYot< dealt with since the *>*t .bl : shmont of the 
Bulletin. Since 1897 a separate annual index has been prepared. 
In 1906 the course adopted in 1896 was repeated but, again in 
deference to the wishes of valued correspondents of Kew, the new 
general index for the period 1887-1906 was issued as a separate 
Appendix to the volume for 1906, and independent of the special 
index for that volume. 
.July. 1V.-20. 
