00 l 



NATURE 



[April 9, 1885 



1 ut it is nevertheless recommended that some steps be taken to 

 protect trees and slirubs which exercise a beneficial influence on 

 tl e regime del caitv. The Kroumis mountains to the north are 

 of a totally different character. Magnificent forests of old trees 

 exist in them, which attain as great dimensions as those in the 

 best French forests. They contain magnificent cork trees and 

 white oaks (Q. Mirbechii), with trunks three or four metres in 

 circumference and ten to fifteen metres in height to the first 

 branches. One forest covers 100,000 hectares, and contains 

 also the alder, willow, wild cherry, beech, poplar, holly, bay, 

 and the tamarisk. This and some neighbouring ones should, 

 the report advises, be strictly preserved. The bark and wood 

 of the oak and cork would repay the expense. 



We have received Mr. Morris's Annual Report on the Public 

 Gardens and Plantations of Jamaica, which, as usual, contains 

 various matters of much general and local interest. We have 

 already referred, in noticing a similar report from Queensland, 

 to the immense economical importance of such institutions as 

 this, and we are glad to perceive that such competent authorities 

 as the late Royal Commissioners in the West Indies and Sir 

 Joseph Hooker have publicly recognised the value of Mr. 

 Morris's labours. The former suggest that in all the lesser 

 islands "plant committees" of the residents should at once be 

 formed to correspond with the establishment in Jamaica, while 

 Sir Joseph Hooker, in commenting on this recommendation in 

 his letter to the Colonial Office, stated that there can be no 

 doubt that the future prosperity of the West Indies will be 

 largely affected by the extension to other islands unprovided 

 with any kind of botanical establishment of the kind of the 

 operations so successfully carried out by Mr. Morris in Jamaica. 

 But he thinks that mere committees will not be enough : botanical 

 stations on a cheap basis are an essential condition for doing 

 anything in an effective way. The money value of rain in 

 Jamaica is well shown in a paragraph in the report quoted from 

 Mr. Maxwell Hall's estimate. A comparison has been made 

 between so many inches of rain per annum and so many casks 

 of sugar per acre. Thus there were 1559 casks per acre for 7g 

 inches rainfall and 1441 casks with 56 inches, so thai the differ- 

 ence due to a larger or smaller island rainfall is on an average 

 nearly one-tenth of the export sugar crop. This one-tenth export 

 crop, for sugar and rum, represents in value nearly 100,000/. 

 But if other produce, which is likewise affected by a greater or 

 less rainfall, such as coffee and pimento, the difference would 

 amount to a very considerable sum. During the year con- 

 siderable attention was devoted in the herbarium to the medicinal 

 plants of the island, and to forming not only a collection of 

 botanical specimens, but also of the barks, roots, and the portions 

 used for medicine. The value of this herbarium to the com- 

 mercial interests of the West Indies was shown while working 

 up the botanical classification of the indigenous plants capable 

 of yielding fibre. It was found that the common native Agaze 

 (aloe) of Jamaica was not, as had been represented in books on 

 Jamaica plants, the Agave americana, but an entirely different 

 species, the Agave keratlo of Salmdyck. The application of 

 this difference, which appears to him only one of botanical 

 nomenclature, to the industrial arts is that, under the belief that 

 this plant was Agave americana, and therefore capable of yield- 

 ing valuable fibre, large sums of money were spent and lost in 

 getting out machinery to clean fibre which was of inferior 

 quality. 



At the end of the report on the Jamaica public gardens above 

 referred to, Mr. Morris mentions some curious instances of super- 

 stitions among the negroes with regard to plants. The plantation 

 labourers believe that if they take up the horse-plaintain suckers 

 (i.e. those with long fingers), and then take up one of the maiden 

 plaintains (with the short fingers) while the gum or juice is still 



fresh upon their cutlasses, and they use the same cutlass, the 

 maiden plaintains will produce horse-plaintains, and this was 

 said by them to be a matter of common experience. It is be- 

 lieved abo to be unlucky to point the finger when speaking of 

 any growing plant in a provision ground, or even to name a 

 plant which has recently been planted. It is stated even by in- 

 telligent Europeans that if the seed of the shaddock (Citrus 

 decumana) is planted, there is but one in a whole shaddock that 

 will produce good and pleasant fruit, and also that there are 

 fifty-two seeds in a shaddock, only two of which produce the 

 real shaddock, while the others produce a variety of fruits such 

 as the sweet lime, forbidden fruit, grape fruit, Chester fruit, and 

 orange ! 



According to an article in the last number of the Oester- 

 reichiscke Monatsschrift fur den Orient, by Herr Friedrich Midler 

 of Vienna, on the palaeography of the Philippine Islands, the 

 inhabitants of the archipelago of Malay descent possess a writing 

 which is going more and more out of use and is being supplanted 

 by the Latin writing introduced with Christianity by the Spanish 

 missionaries. The original writing, which is on the whole in 

 the same form among the various tribes, such as the Tagals, 

 Ilocos, Visayas, Pampangas, is connected first with the writings 

 of the people of the Celebes (Bugis, Macassars), and of Sumatra 

 (Battak, Redschang, Lampong), and the forms point to India as 

 the common origin of all. But whether the writing of the Malay 

 peoples came direct from India, or through the intermediary of 

 another writing ; from which Indian alphabet it came, i.e. from 

 which province ; and at what time, — are questions which various 

 competent scholars have answered in various ways, and which 

 may therefore be regarded as still open. To those who desire 

 to pursue the subject two interesting recent studies may be 

 recommended. One, by Prof. Kern, of Teyden, appears in the 

 well-known Dutch magazine, Bijdragen tot de Tool-, Land- <-n 

 Volkenkunde van Nederlandsck- Indie, vol. iv. No. 10 (1SS5), 

 which is a critical examination of the whole question ; the other, 

 in Spanish, by Seiior Pardo de Tavera, is published as a 

 pamphlet, and is entitled " A Contribution to the Study of the 

 Ancient Alphabets of the Philippines." The special value of 

 the latter is that it investigates the subject more thoroughly than 

 any of its predecessors with special relation to the Philippines, 

 and illustrates it by much that is original from the old literature 

 of the archipelago. It is accompanied by .'plates, containing 

 copies of no less than twelve Philippine alphabets. Nos. 1 1 and 

 12, however, appear to be identical, with the exception of being 

 produced with different instruments. No. II is probably written 

 with a pen on paper, while No. 12 was probably cut by a knife 

 into wood. Even with this deduction there are still eleven dis- 

 tinct alphabets in this archipelago alone. 



The stone implements, shell heaps, and other prehistoric 

 ts of Japan have already received some attention at the 

 hands of Profs. Milne and Morse, and of Herr von Siebol d, an 

 Austrian savant in the diplomatic service in Tokio. Until quite 

 recently, although the Japanese prized stone implements and 

 the like, they appear to have done so on account of their peculiar 

 shapes and as curiosities rather than because of their scientific 

 importance. A Japanese gentleman filling a high official 

 position has, however, just published a volume entitled, "Notes 

 on the Ancient Stone Implements of Japan," for a description of 

 the contents of which we are indebted to the Japan Mail. Mr. 

 Kanda enjoys high reputation as an antiquarian. His book con- 

 tains twenty-four plates, to each of which are appended accurate 

 descriptions of the objects delineated, with their names and 

 other details. The plates are not tinted, so they convey no idea 

 of the colours of the originals, many of which are of black ser- 

 pentine, jade, jasper, amethyst, agate, calcedony, &c. They 

 give the exact shapes and dimensions of all the objects. Mr. 

 Kanda's object is not to ventilate his own opinions, but to furnish 



