economic plants are studied, with great advantage to the planters of the Dutch Indies.
Hevea braziliensis (the indiarubber tree), planted here in May, 1905, at 20 by 20 feet apart, was now from 45 to 50 feet high, and was underplanted in part with Coffee robusta, in part with Cocoa and in part with Ocimum canum, a leguminous plant whose seeds produce oil, but which is dug in as green manure to fertilise the soil. It seemed to me that this is a much more sensible system than the close planting and clean cultivation of the soil below, which I saw adopted in some Malayan rubber plantations; and that the risk of disease, when trees not naturally gregarious are planted over large areas without allow¬ ing any other vegetation to cover the soil, is as great as it was in the case of Coffee, which requires shade to keep it healthy. Such shade is pro¬ vided here by planting with the coffee a very fast growing tree called Derris macrophylla, which grows up above the coffee, and is considered superior to Albizzia, which has been largely used for the same purpose in some modern tea plantations, but is more brittle and does not resist wind so well as the Derris.
Philippine hemp, Musa mindanensis, grows well here and is said to be a profitable crop in East Java, and Yucatan hemp also succeeds well.
Andropogan nardus, the Citronella grass, is also grown for its oil, as well as many other new and little known plants whose economic value is being experimented on.
Close to the entrance gate of the gardens near the Herbarium I measured a very slender palm, Livistonia excelsa, 104 feet high by only 2 feet 10 inches in girth; and a fine clump of the giant bamboo, Dendrocalamus giganteus, was 100 feet high, with forty stems, averaging about 9 inches diameter in a circumference of 23 yards. In the Herb¬ arium building was a fine collection of timbers, where I found, under the name of Eusideroxylon Zwageri, the hard Bornean timber known as “Bilian” wood, and at Palembang as “Ironwood.” The handsomest woods in the collection, as regards their figure, were Nauclea fagifolia, Metrosideros vera from Ceram, Cassia fiorida, and a species of Cedrela from Fort de Koch in Sumatra was, like Cedrela sinensis from Padang, beautifully waved. Schima Noronhæ and Bischoffia javanica were both of fine colour and texture. But none of these timbers, owing to the cost of transport, seems as yet to have been introduced into the English market, where new and little known timbers, however good their quality, usually find a very difficult sale.
On January 9th we left Buitenzorg in a small carriage drawn by three stout ponies, and drove about twenty-five miles over a pass 4,500 feet high, passing the spot where Wallace resided when collecting here on the slopes of the Pangerangong volcano fifty years ago. It was a very pretty drive through country highly cultivated, with rice and fruit trees, including Durian, Mangosteen, Achras sapota, Mangoes and Pineapples. The country was thickly populated up to about 3,000 feet, and we passed a laige Chinese house with a fine avenue of Dammar trees. From about 3,000 feet nearly to the top of the pass was a large tea plantation on fine, rich volcanic soil, but roughly laid out by an American company. On the
