The Flora of Singapore. 



By H. N. Ridley. 



Introduction. The island of Singapore with the small 

 islands of Pulau Ubin and Pulau Tekong in the Johore strait 

 and a few smaller ones lying within English waters form the 

 area the flora of which is enumerated in this paper. The whole 

 is little more than 200 square miles in extent and consists of 

 undulating country, the highest hill being Bukit Timah with an 

 altitude of 500 feet above sea level. The Geology of the island 

 was the subject of a paper by Mr. J. R. Logan (Journ. As. Soc. 

 Beng. xvi. p. 510, published in 1846;, but unfortunately he 

 much misunderstood it. mistaking sedimentary rocks for vol- 

 canic ones. The bigger hills, Bukit Timah, Bukit Mandai, and 

 Tanjong Gol, are composed of a grey granite, which crops out 

 again near Bajau, Changi and Pulau Ubin. The rest of the 

 island is covered with sedimentary deposits of clays, gravels, 

 and sands, often very ferruginous and permeated with bands of 

 clay-ironstone, very much resembling that of some of the Weal- 

 den beds in Kent. This clay iron-stone has unfortunately received 

 the name of Laterite here, a name properly applied to soils baked 

 by a lava-flow, or other volcanic heat. These sedimentary rocks 

 have never produced any fossils except some obscure traces of 

 vegetable remains. They appear to have been derived from 

 disintegrated and decomposed granite, the ironstone bands 

 being formed in many cases at a much later date. No borings 

 of any depth having been made it is impossible to say how deep 

 these strata are, but it is probable that they are of very great 

 thickness and comparatively modern, as appears to be the case 

 in Selangor and elsewhere. In the south of the island in some 

 spots the strata are very strongly upheaved, 



Originally the island appears to have been covered with a 

 dense forest, except along the mangrove edged rivers and the 

 sandy tract of country lying between Tanjong Ru and Changi 

 point. But soon after it was acquired, a great deal of this forest 



