1916] 



HILL BOTANIC GARDENS 211 



sive botanical establishment in the world. The garden was 

 founded in 1817 at the suggestion of Keinwardt/ and Dr. C. L. 

 Blume was appointed the first Director when Reinwardt left 

 Java to become Professor at Leiden. The first Curator, 

 James Hooper, had been trained at the Royal Gardens, Kew. 

 The valuable scientific researches in pure and applied botany- 

 carried out at Buitenzorg are too well known to require de- 

 tailed description, and allusion need only be made to the im- 

 portant encouragement given to the cultivation of Cinchona, 

 rubber, coffee, and other economic products in Java, through 

 the medium of the Botanic Gardens. 



The earliest tropical botanic garden appears to have been 

 that founded in the West Indies at St. Vincent, in 1764.2 A 

 garden of about forty acres was established with Government 

 House in the center, as a place where plants "useful in medi- 

 cine and profitable as articles of commerce might be propa- 

 gated and where nurseries of the valuable productions of Asia 

 and other distant parts might be formed for the benefit of His 

 Majesty's Colonies." Plants intended for the West Indies 

 were lost owing to the mutiny of the Bounty in 1790, but three 

 years later Captain Bligh succeeded in landing a valuable 

 consignment of plants from the Pacific, including the bread 

 fruit, and a few years after, nutmegs, cloves, and other spice 

 plants were introduced. 



Until 1815 the Garden flourished, when interest was shifted 

 to Trinidad, where a garden was formed in 1817, and many 



Laboratories; III. Agricultural and Experimental Garden (151 acres) with 

 laboratory for agricultural chemistry; IV. Pharmacological Laboratory; V. 

 Botanic Garden (145 acres), Mountain Garden (77 acres and 700 acres virgin 

 forest), and Laboratory; VI. Office, Library, and Photographic Laboratory; 

 VII. Forest Flora collections; VIII. Laboratory for the study of Deli tobacco; 

 IX. Coffee Experiment Station ( the two last are partly private institutions ) . 



' It is possible that the original idea of founding a botanic garden at 

 Buitenzorg was made by Sir Stamford Raffles, when Governor of Java, during the 

 few years (1811-17) that Java was a British possession. Near the entrance there 

 is a small monument to the memory of Lady Raffles, who died in Java during the 

 British occupation of the island. 



' Guilding, Rev. Lansdown. An account of the botanical garden in the island 

 of St. Vincent. Glasgow, 1825. See also Kew Bull. Misc. Inf. 1892:02-104. 

 1892. 



