12 



in some part, not specified, of Assam, and was again collected, in 

 1845, by Zollinger, in Java. No one appears to have met with it 

 again till Clarke obtained it in 1871 in the Khasia Hills, Assam ; 

 Clarke's field note says " cultivated in Khasia and said to be the 

 true Patchouli." In 1884 the species was collected in Kwang-tung 

 by B. C. Henry, and in 1885 it was met with by Clarke in Mani- 

 pur, a small State situated between Assam and Burma. Since then 

 it has been obtained in Tonkin by Balansa, in the Burmese Shan 

 States by General Collett, and in the Shan States of Siam by Lord 

 Lamington. 



The small local demand for Patchouli in Calcutta is said at one 

 time to have been met by supplies from the Khasia Hills. The 

 Khasia Patchouli has, however, been replaced in the Calcutta 

 market by the Malayan article. Clarke's note of 1871 and a sub- 

 sequent note by Mann, in 1887, of the occurrence of Microtoena 

 cymosa as a cultivated plant in the Khasia Hills shows that the 

 practice of growing it had long survived the loss of an outside 

 market. The plant is not wild in the Khasia Hills, and Clarke 

 has noted that even in Manipur he suspects that it may have been 

 originally planted. This suspicion extends not only to the Assam 

 records of Griffith and Jenkins, but to the Shan records of General 

 Collett and Lord Lamington, and to one out of three records of 

 the plant from Tonkin. There is hardly room for doubt that 

 Zollinger's record from Java points to M. cymosa as an intro- 

 duced species in that island ; during the past 60 years it has not 

 again been reported from Malaya. 



In two Tonkin localities recorded by Balansa, the nature of his 

 notes and the character of his specimens point to the plant being 

 there a wild species ; the same is true of some of the specimens 

 collected in Kwang-tung by B. C. Henry, and subsequently by 

 Ford. There is, therefore, hardly room for doubt that the isolated 

 record of the Khasia Patchouli from Java may be explained by its 

 introduction to that island by Chinese settlers, and there are good 

 grounds for supposing that its occurrence in the Shan country and 

 in Assam is due to its having spread thence as a cultivated plant 

 from South-Western China or Tonkin. 



D. Prain. 



IV.-TOBACCO CULTIVATION IN SOUTHERN SIAM. 



The following notes on the cultivation of Tobacco in the 

 Northern Siamese Malayan States of the Malay Peninsula were 

 made by Mr. W. W. Skeat during the Cambridge exploring 

 expedition in 1900. Tobacco has never been successfully 

 cultivated in the Southern Malay States, probably on account of 

 the inferiority of the soil. 



At a village near Perils I made enquiry about the local methods 

 of growing tobacco. 

 There are two kinds of tobacco generally grown here :— 

 (1.) Tembakau Chenak. 

 (2.) Tembakau Lerek. 

 The Tembakau Chenak, which is said to derive its name from 

 a village in " TJIu Patani," has the smaller leaf of the two, but it 



