248 



A large map of the rubber ground has been prepared, whereon; 

 is marked the position of every tree, and wherefrom whenever 

 necessary it can always be ascertained if a selected parent has had'. 

 an advantageous position or has not. 



Unfortunately the tapping records have been unequally kept. 

 In the early days, from 1889 to 1902, they were hardly kept at all. 

 From 1902 to 1903, public interest having been aroused, notices of 

 what was being done in the Botanic Gardens appeared in the local 

 press. From 1904 onwards, they were almost completely kept. 

 Using all the materials which have come to hand, a manuscript re- 

 cord has now been made which shows the nature of the tapping and 

 how it was intermitted in the case of each tree ; and the following 

 account largely abridged therefrom avoiding details gives in one 

 view what has happened in the plantation. It, together with the 

 register of the trees and the map above named, serves as the basis- 

 in the work to be undertaken. 



The failure in 1876, of the first consignment from Kew of Hevea 

 seedlings, fifty in number, to reach the Botanic Gardens, Singapore, 

 alive, has been asserted repeatedly, apparently on the ground of a 

 Statement in the Report of the Royal Gardens, Kew, for 1876, which 

 says "the cases did not come into the hands of the Superintendent 



of the Botanic Gardens until the plants were nearly all dead ": 



but when the Report of the Royal Gardens, Kew, for the year 1877 is 

 consulted part of a letter from the Superintendent of the Singapore 

 Gardens is found stating that the Heveas sent in 1876 were making 

 good growth (vide Fetch in Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, 

 Peradenha, v., 1914, p. 440). So some were saved for at least a year: 

 but no records exist showing their further history. If they lived, 

 they introduced into the Colony plants whose origin was certainly 

 from seed collected by Mr. Wickham on the plateaux between the 

 rivers Tapajos and Madeira ; for Kew was distributing these in 1876. 

 Tvventy-two seedlings, a second consignment, sent a year later, 

 arrived safely in June, 1877, and more than half of the number were 

 planted out in the Botanic Gardens, — the exact site unknown, — to be 

 replanted in 1878 in what is now the Palm-valley of the Botanic 

 Garden^;, then the Economic Garden, where they made poor growth. 

 The other nine were taken to Kwala Kangsar and planted there 

 behind the Residency by Mr. J. H. Murton. the Superintendent of 

 the Gardens in Singapore (vide Annual Report, Botanic Gardens, 

 Singapore, for 1 878, p. 3; and Agricultural Bulletin of the Straits and 

 F.M.S., ii., T903, p. 3)- 



■ A third consignment is said on the authority of members of the 

 staff of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Ceylon, (e.g., Wright in Willis, 

 Bamber and Denham, Rubber in the East, 1906, p. 19) to have 

 been despatched from Colombo for the Singapore Botanic Gardens, 

 in 1877 ; but its arrival in Singapore is not recorded. Moreover as it 

 was in 1878 and not in 1877, that Thwaites, then Director of the 

 Roval Botanic Gardens, Ceylon, began to send out plants of his own 



