BOTANY AND AGRICULTURE IN CEYLON 309 



Once settled in the tropical countries in the capacity ot 

 masters, the white races proceeded to investigate the indigenous 

 crops, and to realise that by their command of the means ot 

 transport they could introduce into any country many new crops 

 which might thrive and prove useful to the inhabitants. Even 

 the early Portuguese settlers and merchants realised this, and 

 many plants, now common in the Eastern tropics, were intro- 

 duced by them from the West Indies, and vice versa. Among 

 other things which they brought to Ceylon, for example, 

 are the guava {Psidium guava), the pine-apple, chillies {Capsicum 

 spp.), coffee, the papaw {Carica papaya), the Malay apple 

 {Eugenia Jambos), the rose-apple (E. malaccensis), the dhal or 

 pigeon pea (Cajanus indicus), the horse-radish tree (Moringa 

 pterygospermd), the source of oil of Ben, cotton, the custard- 

 apple {Anona reticulata), and several other plants. All of these 

 they had introduced before 1678. 



The next comers to the tropics, the Dutch, continued the 

 work of acclimatisation with great vigour, and first placed it 

 upon a more scientific and practical basis by establishing botanic 

 gardens in many of their tropical colonies. The object of these 

 gardens was, to a very large extent, the introduction and 

 acclimatisation of the useful plants of other countries. A further 

 large number of useful plants were introduced into Ceylon 

 during the rule of the Dutch, and many, both of these and of the 

 plants introduced by the Portuguese, are now so common and 

 so universally cultivated in the island that no one would suppose 

 them to be other than native. As examples, take the papaw, the 

 guava, the pine-apple, and the cassava (Manihot utilissima). 



Still later came the English. At first they hardly realised 

 the advantages to be gained from botanic gardens, and in 

 Ceylon, for instance, they closed the old Dutch garden, and 

 did not reopen it until 18 10 (they having captured Ceylon in 

 1795), when, on the advice of Sir Joseph Banks, then President 

 of the Royal Society, it was reopened in Colombo, under the 

 charge of William Kerr (after whom is named the genus Kerria). 



The ostensible object with which the English opened their 

 tropical gardens was as much the investigation of the native 

 flora of the countries in which they were situated, as the intro- 

 duction of new and useful plants from abroad ; and at first, 

 owing to the absence of any central organisation, such as there 

 is now in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the absence 



