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safer. Monocotyledonous plants like bananas, sanseviera, etc., would 

 be safer intercrops still as they are not at all adapted to act as hosts 

 to pests of woody Dicotyledons. 



The Editor's note, too, as to science on plantations is much to 

 the point. He says our only complaint is that the work which any 

 one officer is expected to do is colossal and of such a diverse character 

 that the time necessary for searching investigation and research 

 is never available. This is very true. An agricultural Botanist is, 

 at least in the British Empire, expected to keep a stock of every 

 conceivable economic plant and be ready at a minute's notice to 

 give the latest information extracted from some fifty monthly 

 periodicals as to its cultivation, industry and commerce, and at 

 the same time to report from experiment how it has succeeded in 

 his region, and to know the life history of every pest likely to attack 

 it and how to kill it, to maintain in good and ornamental condition 

 a garden often as large and far more varied in contents than a 

 decent sized estate, to keep and add to a herbarium and a museum 

 of local products, as well as a library, to conduct a very 

 extensive correspondence with planters, merchants, investors and 

 other people, and interview a large number of them as well, to write 

 and publish periodical reports or journals, and frequently also to give 

 lectures from time to time, anid export for sale or exchange seeds and 

 plants, sometimes on a very extensive scale, to carry out researches 

 and experiments, many of which really require undivided attention 

 for months, and to do anything else his Government may happen to 

 think he can do. Formerly one or at most two men were supposed 

 to be quite sufficient to perform this work, and the general public 

 were puzzled to know how with this work he could fill up his time. 

 But things are altering and reluctantly Colonial Governments are 

 allowing increases in the staffs of agricultural establishments and 

 making progress in Agriculture more possible all over the Empire. 

 Some other nations have realised the necessity sooner, but the fact 

 that the importance of research in Agriculture is beginning to be 

 realised by our nation at last is a decided forward step. 



The increase in cultivation of Para rubber last year was 

 phenomenal, not only in the Native States but in the Colony, as well 

 as in many other parts of the world. The waste grounds of Singapore 

 island useless for so many 'years after the disappearance of the 

 gambier and pepper plantations, are now being covered with Para 

 rubber, and so great is the demand for plants that a considerable 

 area of swamp land on the Orchard Road in Singapore is being 

 converted into a large nursery of Hevea seedlings, the seed being 

 imported from Klang in tongkang loads. 



As to Malacca the miles of country covered with lalang, which 

 formerly were so conspicuous and depressing, are now flourishing 

 rubber estates, and thanks to rubber, and to some extent the railway 



