6 
Arrowroot and Ginger have shown a satisfactory yield, and the produce of Sweet 
Potato has been abundant. Among the kinds of Tobacco, the Connecticut variety has 
proved most prolific, and experiments instituted at Ipswich, in Queensland, with various 
kinds of tobacco from this Garden have yielded in the warmer climate there similar 
results. The Maryland tobacco also luxuriated. The Shiraz tobacco, cultivated already 
last year, evidently does not find in the vicinity of the metropolis that equality of a mild 
and humid mountain climate, under which, in the highlands of Persia, it advances to 
perfection, though undoubtedly in our moist and elevated mountain regions this variety 
would prosper. The Rheeafibre or Grasscloth plant has thriven fairly. For Coffee, as 
might be anticipated, the climate has proved here too variable, the temperature of our 
cool season being too low and that of the warm season too dry to secure a remunerative 
crop of this plant. By seeds, however, distributed from this establishment, the best variety 
of Mocha Coffee has been introduced, and now for plantation purposes been established 
in the Feejee group. But our experiments teach us, that even in the vicinity of 
Melbourne the Chinese Tea can be grown advantageously as far as climatic conditions 
are concerned. This plant should evidently in Victoria attract a more general attention 
of the agriculturist, as it is clearly destined to form, at no distant day, one of the 
commodities of indigenous culture. If the tea plant succeeds well in the changeable 
and often for lengths of time arid air of the city vicinity, how luxuriantly will not this 
important plant grow on the slopes of our wooded forest ranges, from which, on account 
of the difficulty of transport, cereal crops cannot advantageously be realized. 
We stand evidently in need of a few small experimental gardens in the mild and 
humid parts of our mountain regions, where irrigation could easily be effected, and where 
seclusion from hot winds would be perfect. 
Whether under the expenditure here as yet attending cultivation, as compared to 
that of India and China, tea produced in this colony can be brought to compete with that 
imported, remains to be demonstrated by facts ; but it seems not unlikely that with our 
superior ingenuity in the application of apparatus and machinery the preparation of the 
tealeaves might be largely aided, while the engagement of labor, especially of the juvenile 
and infirm, might still be rendered remunerative for the gathering of the leaves. The 
cultivation of tea has certainly of late drawn into India a large amount of European 
capital and is there now most successfully pursued. 
That the tea plant adopts itself to much diversified soil with facility has been borne 
out by all authentic information. Mr. Handley Sterndale observed the plant thriving on 
vegetable mould largely mixed with sand, on debris of metamorphic rocks, on trap, on clay 
slate, on mica slate, on mica rocks mixed with quartz, and even on ferrugineous clay. In 
the mountains about Assam and elsewhere in India it ascends to 6,000 feet elevation. In 
Kohistan and the Punjab the tea shrubs are exposed to occasional snowfall and frosts, 
under which the plant only in a young seedling state, when it is unfit to cope with great 
atmospheric changes, succumbs. Where bush fires had destroyed tea plantations they have 
been observed to spring again after the advent of rain. Mr. Sterndale recommends the im- 
portation of tea seeds from Bengal whenever required on a large scale and of a superior kind. 
In the local experimental gardens, the establishment of which suggests itself as 
desirable, and which perhaps could be connected with industrial schools, other plants of 
importance might be subjected to trials. 
The first of such experimental gardens of a limited extent might be established in 
East Gipps Land, at Mount Macedon, and on the Murray River. Some preliminary 
measures to form a small Cinchona plantation in one of the mild glens of Mount Macedon 
have been initiated. How important it would prove to plant the warmer coast ranges of 
Australia and any other accessible parts with these precious trees, may be estimated by 
the circumstance, that Cinchona bark is brought in South America remuneratively from 
distances of several weeks travels through the forests to the nearest mercantile ddp6t. 
