250 



It was otherwise in Ceylon. Attention to rubber had been forced 

 on to the Ceylon Botanic Gardens; for on the recommendation of 

 §ir Joseph Hooker, and with the advice of Sir Dietrich Brandis, the 

 India and Colonial Offices had agreed that a big nursery of Para- 

 rubber seedlings should be made in Ceylon to save the situation for 

 India, and enable experimental plantations to be established in Burma 

 as well as in other parts of the Indian Empire. It may be explained 

 that the climate of Calcutta had been tried and found unsuitable, 

 with the first available seedlings, from seed collected for Mr. J. ColHns 

 by a Mr. Karris at Cameta, which is to the south-west of Para at 

 some distance (vide Agricultural Bulletin, Straits and F.M.S., ii., p. 2. 

 and Petch in the Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya, 

 v., 1904, p. 438): they had "utterly failed," Sir George King stated 

 in his Report of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta for 1880-81 ; and 

 thereupon, as India in other damp regions was ill-equipped with 

 botanic establishments, and in order that the already big outlay 

 should not be lost, Ceylon was asked to find in its humid lowlands 

 some counterpart of the Amazon's forests, where the nursery could be 

 established. Sir Clements Markham (vide Peruvian Bark, London, 

 1880, p. 466) accused the Government of India of being lukewarm, 

 whereas other sources of information show that the India office 

 tried to work apart from Kew, to collect seeds and despatch them 

 independently, and not being competently staffed failed ; but in taking 

 the decision to utilise the resources of Ceylon there was nothing 

 but wisdom; and Ceylon became by it at once a new source of 

 wealth to the East. 



* Under the charge of a gardener named W. Chapman, 1919 seed- 

 ling Heveas had been sent to Peradeniya in October, 1876, and in 

 the next year the greater part of them were planted out in a pur- 

 posely acquired plantation at Heneratgoda, on the railway, not very 

 remote from Colombo. All these plants came from the seeds 

 collected by Mr. Wickham on the plateaux over the Tapajos river. 



Ceylon received in 1877 a further hundred plants from Kew. Dr. 

 H. Trimen who two years later, i.e., in 1879, succeeded in the post of 

 Director of the Ceylon Gardens, wrote in 1881 (vide Tropical Agri- 

 culturist, of October 1st. 1881, p. 399) that of 1080 seedlings brought to 

 Kew by Mr. R. Cross without soil, scarcely three per cent, were 

 saved and one hundred of the number transmitted to Ceylon. It is 

 assumed that Trimen in this place referred to the consignment of 

 1877 ; and if what Ceylon then received was from Cross' seedlings, 

 then the Singapore consignment of the same date might also be of 

 Cross' collecting, and not from Wickham's seeds. In which case the 

 current view that the old Singapore trees had their origin over the 

 Tapajos valley would be shaken, for Cross collected near the town of 

 t*ara and on the island of Marajo. The then-Director of the Royal 

 Botanic Gardens, Kew, quoted Trimen's statement without comment 

 in 1898 (tide Kew Bulletin, 1898, p. 253) ; but there is strong reason 

 for believing Trimen mistaken. In the first place Thwaites shortly 

 before his retirement was hardly able to cope with the work which 



