Excerpt from Commercial Botany of the Nineteenth Century: A Record of Progress in the Utilisation of Vegetable Products, in the United Kingdom, and the Introduction of Economic Plants Into the British Colonies, During the Present Century IN considering this subject, the whole history of Economic Botany may be said to be placed under review, for it is quite within the last thirty years that anything like real or general attention has been directed to the subject. It is true that in the present century no single plant has been introduced either to commerce or for home cultiva tion of such widespread importance as the tobacco and potato plants, nevertheless what has been accomplished in a comparatively few years in the cultivation of the cinchonas and the various caoutchouc-producing plants in various parts of the world will bear favourable comparison with anything done in a similar direction in previous centuries, and judging from the present rate of scientific progress the importance of these plants alone in future years may, and probably will, equal those of the tobacco and potato. It would be impossible to form any correct idea of what has been attained in the knowledge of plants, useful or otherwise, without referring to the results of the principal expeditions which have left our shores for different parts of the world during the present century, such, for instance, as Ross's Antarctic Expedition, which resulted in The Botany Of the Antarctic Voyage of H M. Ships Erebus and Terror, in the years 1839 to 1843, by Dr. (now Sir) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.