154 REPORT ON THE ROYAL GARDENS AT KEW. 
bacco; also of the Chinchona Calisaya, sent from Kew. A library 
for this institution has been selected, and several hundred volumes sent 
out this year. 
From the Cape of Good Hope most valuable reports have been re- 
ceived from the Rev. Dr. Brown, colonial botanist, treating of the 
conservation of the forests of that colony, the destruction of which by 
fire has led to the sterility of large tracts of once well-watered land ; 
and of the development of the agricultural resources and botanical 
riches of South Africa generally, and collateral subjects. The culti- 
vation of the Olive seems to promise to become of great importance in 
that colony, and I have been desired to procure and transmit the best 
kinds 
Koeien Island. — Captain Barnard’s excellent report gives a satis- 
factory account of the progress of the imported vegetation in this once 
sterile island, which we continue to supply with plants. Tt now pos- 
sesses thickets of upwards of forty kinds of trees, besides numerous 
shrubs and fruit trées, of which, however, only the Guava ripens. 
These already afford timber for fencing cattle yards. I may mention, 
that when I visited the island in 1843, owing to the want of water, 
but one tree existed on it, and there were not enough vegetables pro- 
duced to supply the Commandant’s table ; whereas now, through the 
introduction of vegetation, the water supply is excellent, and the gar- 
rison and ships visiting the island are supplied with abundance of 
vegetables of various kinds. 
The most important plants distributed from the Royal Gardens have 
been Chinchona seeds and plants to various colonies, etc., and the 
Ipecaeuanha to Trinidad, Ceylon, and Calcutta. A most important 
introduction has been the Calumba root from the Mauritius, a plant 
which it is proposed to cultivate in Ceylon and the West Indies, some 
eminent druggists having reported to us that the supply from East 
Africa is both scanty and bad; and that, owing to the condition of 
labour, ete., on the African coast, there is no prospect of an improve- 
ment 
dine applications for seeds of the best kinds of tobacco having 
been received, especially from Western Australia, through the kindness 
of Colonel Scott, R.E., we procured from Captain Smith, resident at 
the Court of eee ope supply of fresh seed, of the best Shiraz 
Tobacco, which has been distributed to thirty or forty colonies, ete. 
