fA 
gral Bo. Soc meme ttt 
Goer oe 
ih ss ite 
NEW YORK 4 
TANICAL 
BOT Ee 
San per 
The Flora of Singapore. 
By H. N. RIDLEY. 
Introduction. The island of Singapore with the small 
islands of Pulau Ubin and Pulau Tekong in the Johore strait 
and a few smaller ones lying within English waters form the 
area the flora of which is enumerated in this paper. The whole 
is little more than 200 square miles in extent and consists of 
undulating country, the highest hill being Bukit Timah with an 
altitude of 500 feet above sea level. The Geology of the island 
was the subject of a paper by Mr. J. R. Logan (Journ. As. Soc. 
Beng. xvi. p. 519, published in 1846), but unfortunately he 
much misunderstood it, mistaking sedimentary rocks for vol- 
canic ones. The bigger hills, Bukit Timah, Bukit Mandai, and 
Tanjong Gol, are composed of a grey granite, which crops out 
again near Bajau, Changi and Pulau Ubin. The rest of the 
island is covered with sedimentary deposits of clays, gravels, 
and sands, often very ferruginous and permeated with bands of 
clay-ironstone, very much resembling that of some of the Weal- 
den beds in Kent. This clay iron-stone has unfortunately received 
the name of Laterite here, a name properly applied to soils baked 
by a lava-flow, or other volcanic heat. These sedimentary rocks 
have never produced any fossils except some obscure traces of 
vegetable remains. They appear to have been derived from 
disintegrated and decomposed granite, the ironstone bands 
being formed in many cases at a much later date. No borings 
of any depth having been made it is impossible to say how deep 
these strata are, but it is probable that they are of very great 
thickness and comparatively modern, as appears to be the case 
in Selangor and elsewhere. In the south of the island in some 
spots the strata are very strongly upheaved. 
Originally the island appears to have been covered with a 
dense forest, except along the mangrove edged rivers and the 
sandy tract of country lying between Tanjong Ru and Changi 
point. But soon after it was acquired, a ereat deal of this forest 
