Section B. 
CHEMISTRY. 
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, 
J. H. MAIDEN, E.L.S. 
THE CHEMISTRY OF THE AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS 
VEGETATION. 
CONTENTS. 
1. Introductory. 
2. Human foods and food adjuncts. 
■3. Fungi. 
4. A1 gap. 
5. Forage plants — 
(а) Grasses. 
(б) Salt bushes and other fodder 
plants. 
1>. Plants poisonous to stock. 
7. Substances reputed medicinal 
(Drugs). 
8. Narcotics. 
0. Fish poisons of the aborigines. 
10. Gums. 
11. Resins. 
12. lvinos. 
13. Eucalyptus oils. 
14. Other essential oils. 
15. Fixed oils. 
16. Perfumes. 
17. Dyes or tinctorial substances. 
18. Tans. 
10. Timbers. 
20. Fibres. 
INTRODUCTORY. 
I propose to deal with the subject I have chosen for my discourse 
by endeavouring to answer the following questions : — 
(1) What has been done in the direction of chemically investi- 
gating our indigenous plant products ? 
(2) What remains to be done ? 
(3) How can it best be done ? 
Firstly as to the workers. Those who are known by the generic 
and honourable term of chemists are readily divisible into two species, 
the “ analytical chemist” and the “pharmaceutical chemist,” The 
second species, either because he considers his designation too long, or 
because he is tired of association with the grand old science of 
chemistry, sometimes applies to himself a term in which the word 
chemist does not appear. Sometimes it happens that the two species 
are happily blended in the same individual. 
The so-called analytical chemist (though, by the way, recent 
researches in organic chemistry have rendered it necessary that we 
should form a new species, or, at all events, a well-marked variety 
called the synthetical chemist), includes, in these colonies, individuals 
of widely-differing aims and qualifications. At present there is nothing 
to prevent a person calling himself an analytical chemist, and it is 
only within the last few years that Great Britain has taken steps to 
