214 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



The result of this grant has been that on the invitation of the Govern- 

 ments of Australia, New Zealand, the Straits Settlements and Federated 

 Malay States and Ceylon, I was given the opi^ortunity of visiting these 

 countries during the winter and spring of 1927-8. A visit was also paid 

 to Java. At the same time an invitation was received from the Govern- 

 ment of the Union of South Africa, which has now been accepted. 



The Assistant Director has visited Cyprus and the Sudan. 



Mr. H. C. Sampson, the Economic Botanist appointed under the Empire 

 Marketing Board scheme, has undertaken missions, at the request of the 

 respective Governments, to British Guiana and the West Indies, British 

 Honduras, the four West African Dependencies, in connection with the 

 Agricultural Conference held in the Gold Coast last year, and he has 

 recently returned from a visit to the Bahamas. 



The Keeper of the Herbarium was also enabled, last year, to visit the 

 various Botanical Institutions in South and East Africa, with which Kew 

 is in intimate correspondence, after attending the meetings of the British 

 Association. 



Botanical collectors have been sent to Majorca to obtain graft material 

 of almonds suitable for Cyprus ; to the Malay States, Java, Siam, Burma, 

 and Ceylon, to collect wild stocks and cultiA^ated races of bananas to be 

 sent ultimately, after being detained in quarantine at Kew, to the Imperial 

 College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad, in connection with the research 

 being undertaken there on the Panama disease. 



Another collector, our present Curator, was sent to the East to study 

 tropical vegetation and bring back collections of useful and interesting 

 plants for distribution and to enrich the Kew collections ; another, Mr. 

 J. Hutchinson, was sent to South Africa to make carefiil studies of the 

 flora, and by his collections to widen our knowledge of the types and 

 associations of the vegetation, and he is now engaged on a similar under- 

 taking in Rhodesia on the invitation of General the Right Hon. J. C. 

 Smuts, whom we all look forward to greeting very heartily as President 

 of the Association next year. 



Other collecting enterprises on the part of Kew have been undertaken 

 in the Solomon Islands, and on the British-Italian Somaliland Boundary, 

 in connection with the recent joint Boundary Commission, whence 

 Mr. C. L. Collenette has recently returned with a rich and remarkably 

 interesting harvest of material accompanied by ecological information of 

 very great value. 



Dr. J. M. Cowan, now Assistant to the Regius Keeper, Royal Botanic 

 Gardens, Edinburgh, who has been a member of the Kew staS for a time, 

 went to Iraq and Persia last year. This was a joint undertaking arranged 

 between Kew and the John Innes Horticultural Institution, Merton, and 

 some very interesting living plants of horticultural and economic impor- 

 tance were brought home, and also a large collection of dried specimens 

 for the Herbarium. Mr. N. Y. Sandwith, a member of the Herbarium 

 stafi, accompanied the Oxford University Expedition to British Guiana, 

 and by his careful and intensive collecting has added very greatly to our 

 knowledge of the forest flora of the Colony. 



While to complete the story of our major enterprises in this direction, 

 you will be interested to learn that a member of my staff, Mr. Milne- 



