these home from Singapore, and had them in good health ten years afterwards.
The situation of the gardens is excellent, but the soil seemed poor, and the vegetation of Penang generally was not equal to that of the interior of Singapore. We left the steamer here and went by the well managed and equipped railway which runs south to Singapore, stopping for a day at Taiping, the capital of the Perak State, where I tasted for the first time the celebrated Durian fruit of which the Malays and some Europeans are so fond. Though its smell is repulsive to many people, I did not find it so bad as reported, though the fruit itself was by no means so delicious as I expected. Mangosteens are another fruit which are found in perfection here and in Java, and these again were, to my taste, inferior to a good peach. At Taiping I saw in Mr. Barnard’s garden a line plant of the giant orchid Grammatophyllum speciosum in flower, as well as Vanda Hookeriana and Vanda teres, the latter flowering at the top only of long bare stems and by no means so fine as one sees it at a few places in England. On arriving next day at Kuala Lumpur, the capital, I was astonished at the way in which the town had been laid out and built in so short a time. I believe it is a fact that, only twenty years previously to my visit, constant warfare was going on between the Chinese and the Malays, and that Chinese heads were brought in and paid for at so many dollars a piece, as if they were vermin. Now there is a station hotel, which would be considered first-class even in London, a beautifully laid out and well- roaded city, on which motor-cars were a common means of locomotion, a very well-equipped Museum, and Botanic Gardens where the Director, Mr. Robinson, and Mr. Boden Kloss were bringing together a complete collection of the fauna and flora of the Malay Peninsula. The Govern¬ ment offices and shops were far better than in most provincial towns in India. And all this is due to the hard-worked and under-paid officials of the State, and to the extraordinary prosperity which has come to the Malay Peninsula since the rubber boom, which began a few years ago, brought so much European capital to the East, and, to those who got in at the bottom, such large fortunes. I have seen no country in the world, except perhaps Formosa, which has been developed so rapidly, and where good order and good government and prosperity have so rapidly replaced the primitive state of semi-savagery, which over the greater part of the Malay Peninsula existed a generation ago. Chinese labour, British capital, energy and capacity for governing half-civilised peoples, and the mineral and vegetable wealth of the land have done wonders, though the climate is by no means healthy in many places, and there is no cold weather, nor are there hill stations in which Europeans can regain their vigour as in India. There seems to be no difficulty in recruiting the Government services, mercantile or planting industries, with first- class men, though the high pay for all native service makes the position of those who depend on Government salaries very difficult.
As I wanted to see something of the Malayan virgin forest I went out seven miles by train to Sungei Buloh, where an American company is employing Chinese to tap the “Jelotan” trees, Dyera costulata, whose sap produces a variety of gutta-percha. This is said to be the tallest tree
