December, 1910.] 



525 



Miscellaneous, 



of the great irrigation works that have 

 been carried out in India are upon the 

 most colossal scale, and have effected 

 great transformations in the agriculture 

 of large districts of country, making the 

 cultivation possible of land which was 

 previously barren. 



Drainage has not as yet been recog- 

 nised as a work to be attended to by the 

 Government, and indeed there is no 

 reason in most countries why it should 

 be so attended to. But there are coun- 

 tries with large flat low lying tracts, in 

 which there are no rivers or natural 

 drains, in which consequently it is al- 

 most impossible for an individual who 

 has a patch of land at a distance from 

 any of these to get rid of his drainage 

 water, where it might be well for the 

 Government to undertake the duty of 

 providing drainage, and to make large 

 drains at intervals upon a connected 

 system, and then only to sell laud which 

 had somewhere access to such a public 

 drain. In many cases, too, these drains 

 might be of further use as canals for the 

 carriage of produce. 



Having got his land, and got it drain- 

 ed and irrigated, the agriculturist has 

 next to find suitable crops for it. As a 

 rule he will try one of the crops already 

 known to succeed in the country, but 

 he may sometimes try a " new product." 

 It is in this preliminary to agriculture 

 that science, or rather that any of the 

 natural sciences, have so far come in, 

 and Botanic Gardens have for many 

 many years been engaged in bringing 

 into the country new plants likely to be 

 of use in the local agriculture, and 

 acclimatising these and then distribut- 

 ing them about. In this way the range 

 of possible crops for any given piece of 

 land has been greatly widened. 



This branch of work requires more 

 detailed mention, and we may go on to 

 deal with it. A few hundred years ago 

 the useful plants in one tropical country 

 would not be the same as those in 

 another, there having been but little 

 intercourse, and the most obvious thing 

 to be done was therefore to exchange 

 these plants between one country and 

 another. This line of work was vigor- 

 ously pursued by the Portuguese, and in 

 the East, for instance, the guava, the 

 papaw. and other things brought by 

 them from the West are now everywhere 

 cultivated. The Dutch, who came next, 

 went on with this work, and established 

 Botanic Gardens to put it on a better 

 footing, for the mere introduction of a 

 plant is not enough ; it wants trial, and 

 a supply of seeds must be available. 



These gardens were continued by the 

 English, who next appeared in the 

 tropics, and under various governments 

 have formed a, very distinct feature in 

 the agricultural history of the tropics. 

 In view of the great importance which 

 has attached to this line of work, it will 

 be well to follow out in some detail the 

 history of at least one such garden, and 

 we may perhaps be pardoned for choos- 

 ing the Ceylon gardens, which are the 

 largest, and have probably been the 

 most successful of any in the British 

 Colonies. 



The Dutch, who held Ceylon till 1795, 

 had a Botanic Garden there for many 

 years, and by its means introduced a 

 considerable number of useful and orna- 

 mental plants into the island. Many 

 of these are now as firmly established in 

 local culture as the plants introduced by 

 the Portuguese. The English on their 

 first arrival did not fully grasp the 

 importance of such work, and closed 

 the old Dutch garden, only re-opening it 

 upon the advice of Sir Joseph Banks in 

 1810, although in the interval one of 

 the English Governors conducted a pri- 

 vate garden under charge of Joinville. 

 Kerr, after whom the well-known shrub 

 Kerria is named, was at first in charge 

 of the gardens, which underwent two re- 

 moves, until in 1821 they settled under- 

 charge of Moon at Peradeniya, near 

 Kandy, in the centre of the island, and 

 there they still remain. This is a most 

 favourable site, and to it may be ascribed 

 no inconsiderable share in the valuable 

 work that the gardens have carried out. 

 It lies at some elevation in the hills, 

 enough to give it a cooler climate for 

 work, though still tropical, and it lies in 

 a fair average Ceylon climate, and near 

 enough to the great planting districts for 

 the plants grown in it to have the best 

 chance of being seen and tried by the 

 European planters, who are by far 

 the most enterprising agriculturists in 

 Ceylon. Under these favouring circum- 

 stances the gardens have had a most 

 successful history. An immense collec- 

 tion of the useful and interesting plants 

 of all parts of the tropics has been made 

 in them, and they have become a great 

 distributing centre for tropical plants to 

 all parts of the eastern hemisphere. 

 Among the most successful introductions 

 made through them have been cacao, 

 tea, cinchona , and rubber, besides very 

 numerous plants of less value, though in 

 common use in Ceylon. 



The similar gardens at Buitenzorg in 

 Java have had much the same history, 

 and so have those in the West Indies 

 and elsewhere. It must not be forgotten 

 that in the work of obtaining and ex- 



