VALEDrCTORY. 



With the retirement of the Director of Gardens the publication 

 of the Agricultural Bulletin of the Straits and Federated Malay States 

 comes to an end. It was first started in its present form in 1902. 

 Previous to that a Bulletin was issued at irregular intervals, chiefly 

 according to facilities in printing. This, called the old series, consist- 

 ed of 9 numbers and was printed and financed by the Government. 

 The second series, though the first few numbers were printed at the 

 Government press, was in no sense a Government publication. 

 Small grants were given by the Government of the Straits and F.M.S. 

 for which copies of the publication were supplied, and the Planter's 

 Association agreed to grant X,000 dollars annually, for which series 

 of the Bulletin were supplied free to the Planters on their list to the 

 value of the grant. It was hoped that a considerable number of 

 contributors to its pages would have been forthcoming, but this was 

 not the case, so that most of the work was written by the Editor. 

 All that is not signed or to which no author's name is given was 

 written by him. That there is a demand for such a Bulletin is shown 

 by the continuous and steady increase of subscribers from all parts of 

 the world. Most Botanical Gardens and Agricultural stations issue 

 a monthly or quarterly Journal or Bulletin, under the auspices and 

 with the assistance of the Government, and these, if only records of 

 what has been done in the past is being done in the present, are 

 extremely useful. Most of the latest facts and theories in Agriculture 

 are published in these works, so that by them the Agriculturist is kept 

 posted up to date. Of late years a great development in Tropical 

 Agriculture has taken place, one has only to look at the agricultural 

 publications of thirty years ago to see that the whole standard of this 

 work is rising to a higher and higher level, and that the old empiric 

 methods o'f planting and harvesting are long out of date now, scienti- 

 fic cultivation having taken its place. The planter in any country 

 naturally wants to know the latest tips on the cultivation he is inter- 

 ested in, and these are generally published in such Bulletins as this 

 one, but in all kinds of languages. There are upwards of 200 publi- 

 cations of this kind dealing with tropical cultivations, full series of 

 which have been received in the Botanic Gardens, Singapore, for many 

 years in exchange for the Bulletin. And one of the uses of a local 

 Bulletin is to publish extractions or translations of such articles as 

 have a bearing on local Agriculture. No planter could do this him- 

 self. He has neither the time nor the funds to obtain and read all 

 these works. This is part of the work of a Bulletin. Another 

 important point is to call the planter's attention to dangers appearing 

 to his cultivation and to the best remedies for them, thus the first 

 records and observations on Termes gestroi, Fomes Diplodia, Hymeno- 

 choete, Eiitype, the Coffee locust, the Coffee Caterpilla r, many of the 



