PEESIDENTIAL ADDEESS. 2 .j 



Guinea and Sumatra, and by numerous other botanists, 

 more or less connected with the gardens, in the less known 

 islands of Malaya. Amongst these the name of one 

 naturalist appears, whom we are proud to honour as our 

 vice-president — I mean Dr. H. 0. Forbes. In addition 

 to the herbarium the museum buildings contain a collection 

 of dried fruits and seeds of tropical plants as well as a 

 collection of flowers and fruits preserved in alcohol, an 

 extensive series of samples of timber trees, and a large 

 collection of vegetable products of economic importance, 

 such as jute, hemp, india-rubber, gutta-percha, dyes, 

 cinchona, vegetable oils, indigo, sugar, tea, coffee, rice, 

 tobacco and the thousand and one articles of commerce 

 of vegetable origin, known so familiarly to us in this 

 country in their prepared state but whose native home is 

 in the tropics. 



The magnificently equipped laboratories and the wealth 

 of tropical vegetation, literally threatening to smother the 

 laboratories themselves, have tempted some of the most 

 famous of our modern botanists to avail themselves of the 

 welcome offered to all students of plant life to visit the 

 Java Gardens by Dr. Treub and his assistants, and the 

 researches of these savants, published in the Annals of 

 the Buitenzorg Gardens and in various Journals and 

 separate volumes, are amongst the most important of the 

 many contributions to our knowledge of tropical plant 

 life that have been published during the past decade. 



Although greatly inferior to those of Buitenzorg there 

 are many other really fine botanic gardens in the tropics. 

 I may instance though I dare not pause to describe those of 

 Kio de Janeiro with its stately palm avenue, of Hongkong, 

 of Peradeniya, of Singapore and of Calcutta. In the 

 Antipodes also Melbourne and Adelaide must be accorded 

 a place of high rank amongst scientific Botanic Gardens. 



