IX, C, 3 Merrill: Charles B. Robinson, Jr. 193 
the proposed exploration was approved.?, He had become in- 
tensely interested in the possibilities offered by the Amboina 
proposition, declined a very attractive offer from the New York 
Botanical Garden, and entered with great enthusiasm on the 
final work in preparation for the trip to Amboina. This in- 
volved a thorough examination of Rumphius’ “Herbarium Am- 
boinense” and the preparation of several thousand index cards, 
_which were arranged under different heads and cross referenced, 
involving all the native names cited by Rumphius, the Latin 
names of plants to which the Rumphian figures and descriptions 
had been referred to by various authors, and these arranged 
under different heads so that everything was accessible for 
ready reference. To this work he devoted most of his energies 
for over two months, and frequently worked in the office until 
late at night, in order that, once in Amboina, he could determine 
with as little delay as possible those species that most needed 
attention in the field and at the same time connect his current 
collections with the work of Rumphius. 
Both Doctor Robinson and myself considered the exploration 
of Amboina to be one of the most important botanical under- 
takings in the entire Malayan region, not that any large per- 
centage of novelties was to be expected, but on account of the 
bearing that the Amboina collections would have on delimiting 
and definitely settling the status of many species of the older 
authors that were wholly or partly based on Rumphius. 
Our plan for exploring Amboina was not the first one. The 
late Dr. J. G. Boerlage of the Botanical Garden, Buitenzorg, 
selected Amboina in 1900 as the scene of his first and only trip for 
purposes of botanical exploration in the Malay Archipelago, for 
the sole reason that it was a classical locality in the botany of the 
Archipelago and that many of the Rumphian species could not 
clearly be understood without material from the places in which 
they were originally collected by Rumphius. Doctor Boerlage’s 
trip, like Doctor Robinson’s, had a most unfortunate ending, for 
after about a month in Amboina he contracted a fever from 
which he died on August 24 at Ternate, while on his return to 
Java.® | 
Doctor Robinson arrived in Amboina on July 15, 1913, and 
immediately commenced his botanical exploration, utilizing the 
town of Amboina as a base and gradually extending his opera- 
* Merrill, E. D. The Botanical Exploration of Amboina by the Bureau 
of Science, Manila. Science N. S. 38 (1918) 499-502. 
*Treub, M. Natuurk. Tijdschr. Ned. Ind. 60 (1901) 396-412; Verslag. 
’s Lands Plantent. Buitenz. 1900 (1901) 21-25. 
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