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the literature is not sufficiently graphic, or whether the vegetation 

 baffles satisfactory description, is not clear; but the fact remains 

 that the botanist must discard most of his preconceived notions, 

 and form new ideas based on his own observation. 



These remarks are not intended to disparage the interesting 

 features of tropical vegetation. They are intended to emphasize 

 that distances are vast and travel slow in the tropics, making 

 observation of the vegetation correspondingly difficult, and that 

 ideas of the tropics gleaned from print are always incomplete 

 and frequently erroneous. Neither is it expected that these 

 sketches will add to our knowledge of tropical botany. They 

 represent merely the impressions gained by a botanical observer 

 in a hasty trip through a small portion of the Asiatic tropics. 



It still seems to be a general truth that a plant or an animal 

 loses part of its interest to one who does not know its name. 

 In the exceedingly rich flora of the tropics, the traveller from 

 temperate America recognizes few plants even as to the genus, and 

 turns much of his attention, merely for his own satisfaction, to 

 the cultivated species. So in these sketches, a good proportion 

 of the description must be devoted to the economic botany of the 

 regions visited. In the tropics more native species are in cultiva- 

 tion, and there is a much closer relation between the population 

 and the vegetation, than in temperate climates. The botanist 

 who takes little interest in the economic side of his science while 

 at home soon finds himself sampling the different varieties of 

 native fruits, and visiting the markets and plantations as often 

 as the forests. 



On the trip here described, the writer left San Francisco early 

 in September, 1913, and reached the Philippines via Hawaii and 

 Japan. After two months in these islands, he travelled along 

 the coast of Borneo to Singapore and thence to Java. Two 

 months more were spent here, six weeks in Ceylon, and the 

 return voyage was made through the Suez Canal and across the 

 Atlantic, ending in New York in May, 19 14. 



We landed in Yokohama on September 27, and spent a part 

 of that day and the next at the Botanical Garden in Tokio. One 

 reaches the garden by rickshaw after a ride of nearly an hour 



