235 



The land round tlie District Officer's house has been used some- 

 what as an experimental ground to see how various plants 

 grow; but the officers succeed one another at intervals too short for 

 the purpose to be carried out to much effect. Cloves on this piece of 

 land have grown satisfactorily. 



Tamil labour is altogether prevalent in the Bindings, and the 

 Tamils show some tendency to try crops of their own land ; thus Sesa- 

 mum, Ragi (Elensine Coracana) and Chillies are to be seen in small 

 patches near Lumut. This tendency seems to afford a possible open- 

 ing for widening the very meagre list of crop plants of the 

 peninsula. 



Rice which was grown some years ago on the northern borderl- 

 and which went out of cultivation, has been planted again to the 

 extent of about one hundred acres. 



CROTON SPARSIFLORUS, Morong, 

 an American Invader. 



Close to the East Wharf in Singapore, near to the Lagoon 

 Dock, and west of the Peninsula and Oriental Steamship Company's 

 wharf, occurs in some quantity on waste ground an American plant by 

 name Croton sparsiflorus, whose advent is of some interest. For 

 several years it has been spreading in Bengal and Assam, from the 

 coast inland, in a way which strikingly demonstrates its dependence 

 on man, and also shows that without hooks or barbs on its seeds or 

 stickiness or any other device for attaching" them to objects, a plant 

 with an abundant fertility, may get itself spread effectively through 

 trade. Now that it has reached Singapore, and become established, 

 we shall probably witness its steady spread from the new centre 

 along trade routes in Malaya. Nothing eats it; its smell protects 

 it from cattle ; and apparently its natural enemies have been left be- 

 hind in its migration.- Fortunately it is not aggressive as a weed, 

 but for the most part confines itself to waste places. 



Its home is on the River Plate, and it was first described from 

 Paraguay. Its appearance in the East was recorded in 1905, 

 when Sir David Prain, in an account of the vegetation around 

 Calcutta (Records of the Botanic Survey of India, vol. iii., page 276) 

 stated that it was abundant in waste places to the south of the city,, 

 particularly about Diamond Harbour. From a paper published later 

 by Professor P. J. Briihl, (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,, 

 new series, 190S, page 6.03) we learn that as early as IQOI, one of these 

 waste places was within six miles of the city (four miles from the 

 ducks), and that in 1903 or 1904, it advanced as far as the waste ground. 



