249 



propagation, the date appears to be too early for any consignment 

 from those Gardens. That an entry of the despatch of rubber plants 

 from Peradeniya exists in the departmental records seems a fact, but 

 may it not relate to the second consignment from Kew which would 

 pass through Ceylon on its way eastward? 



To the charge of the Superintendent of Gardens in Singapore 

 was added in 1879 by the Colonial Government the land which novr 

 is the Economic Garden. At the time of being handed over the low- 

 lying part was an indigo plantation, and the hill-slopes above il 

 vegetable gardens cultivated by Chinese, while the hill-top was a 

 more-or-less neglected stretch of secondary jungle (blukar). To 

 the junction of the indigo with the vegetable gardens, Mr. W. Fox, 

 now acting for Mr. N. Cantley who had succeeded to the post of 

 Superintendent but been taken ill, transferred from the Palm-valley 

 the still surviving Para-rubber trees that had been planted by Murton, 

 placing them in a single line. The reader should turn to the first 

 plate in the Agricultural Bulletin of the Straits and F.M.S., II., 1903, 

 for an illustration of these trees at twenty-seven years of age, 

 and to the opposite plate for those still standing in 1913. One 

 of the central trees. No. 5, had died in 1904; and from it, death 

 spread in either diiection along the line until in 1913, four trees 

 alone stood ; and now there are but three. 



It has always been accepted latterly that the parents of these 

 trees grew, in Brazil, on the upland plateaux over the valley of the 

 Tapajos river, whence the seed was collected for the Government of 

 British India, by Mr. H. A. Wickham. But to those in authority in 

 Singapore, in 1878, it was not known with certainty what had been 

 the origin of the stock ; and as another of the collectors of Para- 

 rubber seed and plants, Mr. Cross, had officially recommended lands 

 subject to inundation as suitable (vide his letter to the India Office, 

 dated 29th. March, 1877, which may easily be read in Ferguson's 

 All About Rubber, 2nd. edition, 1887, p. 59), his descriptions of the 

 flooded lowlands where the Para-rubber tree grows in the Amazon 

 valley were allowed to weigh in the selection of a damp site for 

 the trees {Annual Report, Botanic Gardens, Singapore, for 1878, p. 3); 

 and after Murton had expressed himself disappointed with the result, 

 of this first transplanting, Mr. Fox gave them a still damper position. 

 Mr. Fox, who had personal acquaintance with Mr. Cross, and had 

 learned from him the condition of the country near Para, informs 

 the writer that the growth of the trees was much improved by the 

 second transfer. 



Cantley at first had no great opinion of Hevea. He wrote 

 in 1885 of the trees in his charge that they "grow well; but in a 

 country where the best rubbers grow wild, it is somewhat superfluous 

 to refer to foreign species, the ultimate success of which may be 

 ■doubtful." Beyond giving to the trees a little general care, he did 

 nothing to them; and as he was not suppUed with funds for the 

 •cultivation of the Economic Garden, scrub began to swallow up the 

 lands that had been in cultivation. 



