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AUSTRALIAN  MEDICAL  PLANTS. 
AUSTRALIAN  MEDICINAL  PLANTS. 
Dr.  Ferdinand  Muller,  Government  Botanist  to  the  Colony  of 
Victoria,  Australia,  has  addressed  to  the  Colonial  Secretary,  his 
first  General  Report  on  the  Vegetation  of  the  Colony,  under 
date  Melbourne,  Sept.  5,  1853.  In  this  report,  which,  in  con- 
junction with  other  documents  relating  to  Australia,  has  recently 
been  printed  and  presented  to  Parliament,  the  author  thus  re- 
fers to  the  plants  of  that  country,  which,  in  his  opinion,  are  like- 
ly to  prove  useful  in  medicine: — 
The  inestimable  truth,  that  we  may  safely  deduct  the  closest 
affinities  of  the  medicinal  properties  of  plants  from  their  natural 
alliance — a  truth  which  achieved  the  most  complete  triumph  of 
the  natural  system  over  all  artificial  classifications — has  general- 
ly guided  me  in  tracing  out  which  plants  might  be  administered 
in  medicine.  By  this  guidance,  I  observed  that  our  Pimelece 
are  pervaded  by  that  -acridity  for  which  the  bark  of  Daphne 
mezereum  is  employed  ;  that  our  Pobjgala  veronica^.  Miill.,  the 
only  described  Australian  species  of  a  large  genus,  and  in  close 
relation  to  one  lately  discovered  in  the  Chinese  empire,  not  only 
agrees,  like  some  kinds  of  Comesperma,  with  the  Austrian 
PolT/gala  amara,  in  those  qualities  for  which  that  plant  has  been 
administered  in  consumption,  but  also  participates  in  the  medici- 
nal virtue  of  Polygala  senega  from  North  America.  Gratiola 
latifolia,  R.  Br.,  and  6r.  puhescens,  R.  Br.,  Convolvulus  erubeseens, 
Sims,  and  the  various  kinds  of  Mentha  are  not  inferior  to  similar 
European  species.  The  bark  of  Tasmania  aromatica,  R.  Br., 
appears  to  me  to  possess  the  medicinal  power  of  Winter's  bark, 
gathered  from  a  similar  tree  in  Tierra  del  Fuego  ;  and  this  fruit 
is  allied  to  that  of  the  North  American  Magnolia?  used  in  cases 
of  rheumatism  and  intermittent  fever.  The  whole  natural  order 
of  G-oodeniacede,  with  the  exception  perhaps  of  a  few  species, 
contains  a  tonic  bitterness  never  recognized  before,  and  dis- 
cernible in  many  plants  in  so  high  a  degree,  that  I  was  induced 
for  this  reason  to  bestow  upon  a  new  genus  from  the  interior 
the  name  of  Picrophyta  :  this  property,  which  indicates  a  certain 
alliance  to  Grentianea?,  deserves  the  more  consideration,  as  the 
true  gentians  are  so  sparingly  distributed  through  Australia, 
while  the  Croodeniaceos  form  everywhere  here  a  prominent  fea- 
