OCCASIONAL NOTES, 415 
No one is likely to disagree with the general proposition | 
that the same native name may be applied to a variety of 
trees or plants possessed of similar properties, and that, in 
consequence of this rough classification it is unsafe to decide, 
from the mere fact of the use of the generic native appella- 
tion, which individual, out of several varieties, is intended to 
be meant. But if Malay scholars in the Straits have much 
to learn of botany, botanists, on the other hand, have to guard 
against errors resulting from wart of knowledge of the native 
language. In Mr. Scorrreccuinr’s letter a plant is repeatedly 
described, incorrectly, as zkan tuba. He has evidently been 
misled by some similarity in sound between zkan, fish, and 
akar, root. Tuba is the plant, akar tuba, the tuba root, (the 
portion used by the Malays for stupefying fish), while ¢wba tkan, 
or menuba ikan, means to kill fish with tuba. Ikan tuba, it 
there were such an expression, could only be the designation 
of a kind of fish “ the tuba fish.’’—Eb. | 
fats Leh MIDESUMATKRA EXPEDITION: 
Mr. Vaw Hasseut writes from Batavia as follows under 
date February loth, 1886 :— 
“Tn reply to the editor’s note, which precedes the transal- 
tion of the account I gave at the third International Geogra- 
phical Congress at Venice, Septem ber, 1881, of the object and 
the results of a Dutch expedition into the interior of Sumatra 
in the years 1877, 1878 and 1879, I have the honour hereby 
to inform you that not only I do not in the least object to the 
said translation being published, but, on the contrary, appre- 
ciate its being spread ; for it is my earnest desire that both 
object and results of that Dutch expedition, which I am con- 
fident did much towards increasing our knowledge of the 
interior of Sumatra, may become more generally known also 
<< your countrymen.” 
“In the account given by me at Venice, I had to record 
