I3« 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[August i, 1884. 



the produce obtained from it, besides a branch with 

 leaves for identification. 



Not less valuable were the other gifts of herbaria with 

 the addition of specimens as they are brought into the 

 market by the collectors. In the very first place must 

 be mentioned the extensive collection brought together 

 with much trouble by the Controleur J. F. A. de Rooij 

 of Soepayang, who accompanied this collection with a 

 herbarium as complete as possible, and a detailed 

 report on each variety separately. 



This gift and the not less choice collection of the 

 Controleur Van der Ploeg of Soengei Pagoe and 12 Kottas 

 will be each dealt with below. 



Quite independently of these efforts of the Director 

 of the Public Botanic Garden the subject was soon 

 taken up heartily and with ardour iu other quarters. 



Hr. Ten Brummeler, Chief Inspector, head of the 

 post and telegraph service in Batavia, takiug occasion 

 from an important motion carried at the Congres des 

 Eleetriciens held in the autumn of 1S81 at Paris, in 

 which the desirability was expressed, that, in countries 

 which yielded the substances referred to, rules should 

 be laid down for the cultivation of the trees from which 

 those varieties of gums were drawn, shortly after his 

 return from Europe in April 1882 induced the Director 

 of Municipal Public Works to draw the attention of 

 the Government to this subject, that means might be 

 taken to preserve the trees which yield these products 

 from entire destruction and by plain directions to 

 atttain to better cultivation. 



When Government showed that they were deeply 

 impressed, and that they also took an interest in this 

 subject, the Director of the Local Board of Administra- 

 tion was, on a subsequent recommendation of the Direct- 

 or of the Public Botanic Garden, requested by a 

 Government order to obtain reports on the occurrence, 

 the production and the raw product of both of the 

 plants of Java which, according to Hasskarl, produce 

 gutta-percha — the karet andjing and the karet mocniUmj, 

 whilst the undersigned received orders to proceed iu the 

 month of September following to Moeara Laboe in the 

 l'a lang hillcountry in order to institute in loco an 

 investigation into the botanic origin of these plants as 

 well as into the climatological conditions necessary 

 for their good growth. 



Meanwhile, at the request of the Director of Muni- 

 cipal Public Works, a collection of specimens of gutta 

 ;iud caoutchouc was made by the Local Board of Ad- 

 ministration through the under officials, which is cert- 

 ainly the finest and most complete that has ever been 

 seen on this earth. 



This collection was placed in the hands of Hr. Ten 

 Brummeler and sent to the International Colonial and 

 Export Exhibition at Amsterdam, accompanied by an 

 exhaustive list of the most interesting details regarding 

 the place of growth, the mode of culture, the soil of 

 the land on which the plant grew, the value of the 

 produce in commerce, &c, a collection that must un- 

 doubtedly have attracted the attention of every com- 

 mercial and scientific visitor to the Exhibition. 



The list was printed in the Tijdschrift voor Nijverheid 

 en Landbouw in Nederlandsch-Indie, Vol. XXVIII, 

 Part I., and it cannot fail, as Hr. Ten Brummeler 

 intends it should do, to awaken the interest of the 

 large landed proprietors and managers of agricultural 

 enterprizes. Duplicates of the greater number of 

 specimens sent to Amsterdam with the addition of 

 some received later will be Bent by Hr. Ten 

 Brummeler to the exhibition to be held at 

 Buitenzorg in September next, whilst at its close the 

 whole collection is, with the greatest liberality, to 

 be handed over to the Director of the Public Botanic 

 Garden to be deposited in the Museum. 



Meanwhile, the copious information received from 

 Banka aud the Padang hillcountry placed the Director 

 of the Public Botanic Garden in a position to make 



effectual attempts at the task of performing an 

 experiment with the varieties which, so far as can 

 be judged provisionally, yield gutta of good quality, 

 by growing these on a somewhat extensive scale in 

 the economic garden at Tjikeumeuh. To this end 

 the assistance of the heads of the Western Govern- 

 ment was once more called in for the procuring of 

 large quantities of seed of those plants which evidently 

 yield the best commercial varieties, and it was not 

 long before tbe Public Botanic Garden received from 

 the President of Banka a large quantity of seed which, 

 at this moment, has grown in the economic garden 

 to a respectable height aud promises to be a tine 

 plantation. 



From the Padang hillcountry seed could not be 

 expected bo quickly ; the application was received 

 after the fruiting season of the trees, and as these, 

 so far as we know, blossom but once a year, the 

 Beed cannot be expected before the end of the 

 current year. Through the intervention of the Director 

 of the Local Board of Administration, the Public 

 Botanic Garden at the same time received most interest- 

 ing information from the Factory of the Netherlands 

 Trading Company regarding the localities from which 

 the gutta-percha produced in our archipelago is 

 exported, and the quantity of the exports of the last 

 three years, besides other not less interesting details 

 regarding the manner of collecting the sap, the age 

 at which the tree is felled, &c. 



In apparently total ignorance of what had been 

 done both on the part of the Government and by 

 private persons in [Netherlands] India, Hr. F. W. 

 Van Eedm, Secretary of the Commercial Company 

 and Director of the Colonial Museum at Haarlem, 

 wrote an article which, under the title of "Tough, 

 but No Politics," appeared in the March number of the 

 journal issued by the Netherlands Company for the 

 Promotion of Industry. Hr. Van Eeden brought 

 together succinctly all that was known on this subject 

 with the object of attracting the attention of commerce 

 and industry to this product. 



Finally, there appeared in the subsequent number of 

 the same periodical an essay on the different varieties 

 of gutta of South-east Borneo from the pen of 

 Hr. Schlimmer, iu which many interesting facts 

 were given, and to which I hope to refer more fully 

 hereafter. 



The reason why I wished to add one thing and 

 another to the literature on this subject is not that 

 I am as yet in a prsition to supply facts of importance 

 ou the botanical side of the question. 



The inquiry instituted thus far by me is of a very 

 preliminary character and does not yet admit of the 

 drawing therefrom of important results. The herbarium 

 material available in our Museum and that furnished 

 to us by the abovementioued collections was for the 

 most part too incomplete for the varieties to be 

 determined botanically. The blame of this must not 

 be referred entirely to insufficient care bestowed on 

 the collection : our Museum in not the only one 

 which does not possess complete herbarium specimens 

 of guttapercha-yit'lding plants; the same may be said 

 of all museums in the world both in tbe tropics aud 

 in the great and world-famed European herbaria. 



Even the best-known gutta-percha plant, the 

 Biohopsis Gutta Benth. (Isonaridra Gutta Hook.), is 

 found in good specimens in scarcely any collection of 

 plants, and M. Beauvisage and Prof. Baillon of Paris, 

 who a couple of years ago especially were greatly 

 interested in this matter, were able only alter very 

 great trouble to procure a single authentic specimen 

 of this plant from the British Museum, and even 

 that was far from complete, and had not a single 

 opened blossom or ripe fruit. 



The incompleteness of the herbarium material and 

 the extremely limited knowledge of the botanical 



