412 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 846 



I hasten to explain the above statements 

 which at first sight may appear too sweeping 

 and too severe. It is true that by individual 

 and public effort, in the eastern tropics, in 

 India, Ceylon, Malaya, Java and the Philip- 

 pines a large amount of scientific research on 

 tropical subjects has been accomplished from 

 time to time. Vast quantities of valuable ob- 

 servation have been accumulated, but we still 

 lack scientific data from many other parts, 

 without which we can not arrive at definite 

 conclusions. It is equally true that many in- 

 dividual scientists and scientific explorations 

 have penetrated the swampy forests of the 

 Amazon and the Orinoco, have marched over 

 the pampas of Brazil and the llanos of Peru, 

 have paddled up the affluents of Magdalena 

 and Marafion rivers, climbed the snowy peaks 

 of the Andes under a tropical sun, dwelt on 

 the fever-infested sands of the Mosquito coast 

 or sweltered in the dampness on the slopes of 

 the Central American volcanoes, but all this 

 work has been accomplished without a com- 

 prehensive plan or a definite purpose in view 

 as to a final understanding of the conditions 

 of the tropics. This pioneer work is most 

 valuable, it has shown us what a marvelously 

 rich field for research is to be found in the 

 tropics. 



The old European nations with tropical 

 dependencies realized long ago that the suc- 

 cessful opening up of their colonies depended 

 on a proper knowledge of their resources. 

 From the time of Linnaeus, who sent many of 

 his pupils to tropical countries, to that of the 

 Honorable East India Company, from the 

 time of Captain Cook's first voyage, when 

 Banks and Solander gathered such valuable 

 data, up to the present day the collections 

 from the tropics have been mainly of an eco- 

 nomic nature. These collections have been 

 stored and studied in European and American 

 scientific institutions, generally by scientific 

 men who have not themselves had the oppor- 

 tunity of travelling in the tropics. Where 

 such studies have been made on living speci- 

 mens the latter have been kept under artificial 

 conditions, which seldom if ever give a true 



imitation of the real natural surroundings 

 such as they exist in the tropics. 



The most important among such institu- 

 tions in Europe is Kew, with its gardens, 

 hothouses, museums and herbarium. By 

 being the central place of tropical botanical 

 research for the British colonies, as well as a 

 school of tropical horticulture, which has pro- 

 duced a great number of scientific men for 

 Great Britain's tropical dependencies, Kew 

 has rendered tropical science invaluable serv- 

 ice. 



The Imperial Institute in London, in later 

 years, has commenced to investigate colonial 

 products more closely than was possible at 

 Kew, and the brief but ilseful work of the 

 Liverpool Institute for commercial research 

 in the tropics indicated the lines upon which 

 tropical investigation ought to be conducted. 

 The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 

 through the investigations of Boss and others 

 deserves the highest praise. 



We find in India numerous scientific insti- 

 tutions for tropical research, and in the Brit- 

 ish colonies generally the botanical and ac- 

 climatization gardens have become features of 

 the greatest importance. Of British tropical 

 gardens in the East, those in Singapore, Pera- 

 deniya, Calcutta and Kamerunga are espe- 

 cially noteworthy for their services to botan- 

 ical science in general and to tropical 

 agriculture in particular. The German, 

 Brandis, organized Indian forestry on a scien- 

 tific basis, which is not surpassed even by the 

 work of Pinchot in this country, and the in- 

 vestigations in recent years at the Dehra Dun 

 Forest Eesearch Institute are unique in their 

 thoroughness and value. It took an American 

 to establish Indian agricultural research on a 

 modern footing, and the Agricultural Ee- 

 search Institute at Pusa is now recognized as 

 one of the leading institutions in the east. 



The small acclimatization gardens in Bris- 

 bane, Port Darwin, Perak and Bangalore have 

 been very useful in their way. 



Holland found that the material progress 

 of its colonies depended on the scientific de- 

 velopment of agriculture, forestry, mining 

 and other industries. With characteristic 



