3 io SCIENCE PROGRESS 



of any good method of transferring plants over long distances — 

 unless, as in a few cases, they would travel as seeds — they were 

 able to do but little in this latter direction. The history of the 

 botanic gardens in Ceylon, which, both in the investigation of 

 the native flora and in the introduction of plants from abroad, 

 have been most efficient and successful, may therefore be taken 

 as typical, and will in general illustrate the history of all. 



Started in Colombo in 1810, and afterwards transferred to 

 Kalutara on the south-west coast, the gardens did not begin their 

 really useful life till the final transfer was made, under the rule 

 of Alexander Moon, to their present site at Peradeniya, near 

 Kandy, in the mountain region in the central province of the 

 island. This was effected in 1821, six years after the conquest 

 of the Kandyan kingdom by the English. Prior to this period 

 the only works dealing with the flora of Ceylon were Hermann's 

 Musceum Zeylanicum (17 17), Burmann's Thesaurus Zeylanicus 

 (1737), and Linnaeus's Flora Zeylauica (1747). How very incom- 

 plete our knowledge was of the flora may be seen from the fact 

 that the last-named book only contains 429 determined and 228 

 undetermined species. Moon set vigorously to work to remedy 

 this state of affairs, and in 1824 published his Catalogue of the 

 Indigenous and Exotic Plants of Ceylon, which contains 1,127 

 species, or a trifle over one-third of the total flora of the island. 



With the death of Moon, in 1825, work at the garden 

 languished for about twenty years, the place being under 

 the rule of " practical " gardeners, and gradually sinking into the 

 condition of a Government market garden, whose produce was 

 sold in Kandy. This phase came to an end at about the same 

 period as the realisation in England of the fact that there must 

 be some central institution in that country, if acclimatisation of 

 plants in the tropics was to be properly attended to. One 

 of the first appointments in the tropics made under the guidance 

 of Sir William Hooker at Kew was that of George Gardner, the 

 well-known Brazilian traveller, to the superintendence of the 

 Ceylon Botanic Gardens. Unfortunately, Gardner died of 

 apoplexy within a few years, but he had already taken a great 

 step in advance : the market gardening work was given up, the 

 gardens, aided by Kew, had set about the introduction of useful 

 and valuable plants from other countries, and the investigation 

 of the Ceylon flora was being vigorously pushed on. 



Gardner was succeeded by George Henry Kendrick Thwaites, 



