Pomona College Journal of Economic Botany 



215 



which commercial fertilizers are used. For the more exact knowledge that we 

 must have, we sit back and await the tardy, long distance action of the Federal 

 Government, or the action of state institutions that cannot adequately serve the 

 other agricultural interests of the state, to say nothing of our own peculiar sub- 

 tropical interests. Young men come to us in numbers, inquiring where they shall 

 go for technical preparation for citrus culture, exactly such as is described above 

 as splendidly in operation in the interests of Javan coffee culture. What can we 

 tell them? Simply this — that there is no place of the sort to go to in the State 

 of California — not even in Southern California, where citrus culture is supposed 

 to l>e the greatest industry! 



We have county organizations to serve our horticultural interests, that might 

 be built up into towers of strength to us, that might attract to our service the 

 best specialists in the country, that might yield to us much of the many urgent 

 expert services that we so much require, while almost without exception we have 

 relinquished these whole possibilities to become the spoils of politicians, and to 

 men of no technical training whatever. While all intelligent growers groan under 

 this abuse, they have not acquired the courage to take advantage of the recall 

 which the law provides as a ready means of relief from this irksome and clogging 

 parasitism. 



It almost makes the horticulturist wish he was a Javanese to read further 

 from Cabaton, as follows: "The State has demonstrated its ardent desire to 

 assist both colonists and natives in the intensive agricultural development which 

 is making the fortune of Java. The Botanical Institute of Buitenzorg is not the 

 least happy of its efforts. This establishment, which has no rival in the world, 

 is not merely a marvellous assemblage of all the products of the Archipelago; its 

 object is practical as well as scientific. Beauty is only its outward form; truth 

 and utility are its inner purpose. It comprises the Botanical Garden proper of 

 145 acres at Buitenzorg itself, and as annexes the experimental gardens at 

 Tjikeumeu, of 180 acres; the mountain gardens of Tjibodas, which have a much 

 larger area; and finally the virgin forest of Tjibodas, of 700 acres. At each of 

 these establishments are laboratories, museums, libraries, herbaria, and collections, 

 directed by scientists of the highest rank, from the founder of the Institute, 

 Professor Reinwardt of Amsterdam, to the last Director, the eminent Dr. Treub. 

 In the experimental gardens attempts at the acclimatization of foreign plants and 

 trees of agricultural value arc carried on uninterruptedly ; the degree of resistance 

 which they offer under determined conditions is studied; experiments are made 

 in the crossing and improvement of the flora of the country ; in short, the practical 

 value and uses of the whole flora are investigated. In the laboratories, on the 

 other hand, are studied vegetable parasites, noxious insects, chemical manures, 

 etc. — all that is capable of destroying or enriching that flora. The service which 

 these laboratories have rendered in investigating the maladies peculiar to sugar 

 cane, tobacco, and coffee, has been so great that private individuals have built such 

 laboratories at their own expense in many parts of Java, for the better guidance 

 of their own plantations! This Botanical Institute, so noted for its purely scien- 

 tific labors, as well as for its practical advice, costs the East Indies 843,400 florins 



