32 USEFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 
On January 1, 1889, Dumont d’Urville, commanding the Astrolabe 
and Zelée, paid his second visit to Guam. Attached to the expedition 
were Hombron and Jacquinot, as doctors and botanists, and Arago as 
artist. Two collections of plants were made on this expedition, the 
first by the above-named botanists, the second, including several new 
species of alge, by Dumont d’Urville himself. Besides the official 
reports of this expedition “a narrative was written by Arago.? 
Hombron gave his collection of plants to M. Benjamin Delessert, 
whose herbarium was afterwards presented by one of his nieces to the 
city of Geneva, Switzerland. It has been placed in a building in the 
Botanical Garden of that city. 
SXTRACTS FROM THE ARCHIVES OF GUAM, RELATING TO ITS ECONOMIC 
HISTORY. 
At Agafia, the capital of Guam, there are a number of letter books 
containing copies of the official communications of the governors of 
the Mariannes to their immediate superior, the captain-general of the 
Philippines. In these letters various questions are discussed at length 
regarding the policy which should be pursued to make the Marianne 
Islands self-supporting and profitable to Spain, and to make the 
natives prosperous and happy. Arguments are advanced in favor 
both of protection and of free trade with visiting vessels. Attempts 
were made to compel the natives to till the ground, and inducements 
were offered by tempting their self-interest. Causes for the failure of 
the population to increase were sought in the destruction of the crops 
by hurricanes and pests, in the use of unwholesome or injurious food, 
and in the disinclination of the natives to work more than was neces- 
sary for their daily needs. Some of the governors greedily monopo- 
lized all trade, forcing the natives and the soldiers of the barracks 
to buy goods from them at prices arbitrarily fixed by themselves, 
and forbidding the natives to sell their products to the whalers who 
flocked to the islands. Others gave the natives free license to trade 
and entered into their daily life by cultivating farms of their own 
after the native fashion. Efforts were made to benefit the islands by 
decrees of the captains-general of the Philippines, to whose ears came 
stories of dishonesty and oppression on the part of the governors, and 
contidential subordinates were sent to the islands to see what could be 
done for their good. The following extracts, showing the efforts made 
in behalf of the islands and the natives, are taken from the archives 
at Agafia. 
« Voyage au pole sud, ete., 1841-1854. See List of works. 
» Arago, Jacques Etienne Victor. Voyage autour du monde, ete., 1843. See List of 
works. 
