This book had its beginnings about thirty-five years ago, when I migrated to Australia from Canada, and began a doctoral study concerning the role of allelopathy in forests of the eucalypt known in Australia as mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans), under the supervision of Dr Kingsley Rowan and the late Dr David Ashton. In first assembling materials for the usual survey of the relevant literature, I came to realise that the relative youth of Australia as a nation and its geographical remoteness were to be barriers in fully dealing with historical concepts. At times, the simplest option was to...