Experiment Stations. 



As there seems to be considerable misconception going at the present time 

 as to the aims and objects of an Experiment Station, it may be useful to give a slight 

 outline of what is aimed at in such an institution. Ceylon practically led the way in 

 the establishment of large Experiment Stations ; many of the West Indian and other 

 colonies, besides Java and other places, possessed such places, but they were all on 

 the very small scale, growing one-tenth of an acre with this manure, one-tenth with 

 that, growing one-quarter of an acre with this crop, one-half with that, and it was 

 Ceylon which really set the example, now being universally followed, of having 

 large Stations, upon which the various crops should be grown on large areas, so that 

 enough yield should be obtained to be dealt with in the same way as it would be upon 

 an esoate, and enough to be worth selling in the open market, instead of getting a 

 valuation of a small sample through Kew or the Imperial Institute, or in other ways. 



The Experiment Station represents an outgrowth of the older organisation of 

 " Botanic Gardens," which were kept up in most of the first-class Colonies, and brings 

 them into line with the more modern conditions, to which the older organisation is 

 no longer suited in any way. Until about the year 1880 (in Ceylon) or 1885, the main 

 duty of the Botanic Gardens was the introduction of new plants into Ceylon, which 

 were likely to prove useful in agriculture or in horticulture, but since that period 

 the work has gradually decreased in importance as practically all the useful plants 

 that would grow in the island were one by one introduced, and as the organisation 

 of private agencies for the supply of seeds and plants more and more narrowed the 

 sphere of operation of a public agency for the same purpose. During the period from 

 1880 to 1890 almost the only useful plants that were actually introduced by the 

 Botanic Gardens were the Milk tree, the Fustic, the Eagle wood, Cinnamomum 

 Cassia, Jacaranda mimossefolia, the Tree Tomato, species of Willughbeia and Lan- 

 dolphia, the Benzoin, the Balata, Millettia, the Mate, Cedrela odorata, and the Kei 

 apple, none of which can be said to be of any serious importance in Ceylon, or likely 

 to become of such. The duties of the Botanic Gardens were in fact reduced to 

 pushing the plants already introduced, like cinchona, cacao, and rubber. These 

 products being once properly taken up, it is evident that the older organisation must 

 either expand in new directions, or become moribund, attending mainly to horti 

 culture (we leave out of consideration in this place the very important duty of work- 

 ing out the native flora of the colony, because this has now been very largely done 

 for Ceylon, though not for such colonies as the Straits;. 



The salient feature of the past century in Ceylon was the occurrence of a 

 series of " booms " in the cultivation of the different economic products formerly only 

 cultivated by the native races of tropical mankind, or only collected from wild 

 plants in the jungle. One by one, coffee, cinchona, tea, cacao, cardamoms, and 

 indiarubber, have risen into prominence. The history of the present century will 

 almost certainly be very different, seeing that now practically all the tropical 

 products of any importance whatever are being cultivated by Europeans or 

 Americans somewhere or another, with all the resources of capital, science, and 

 politics. 



Acclimatisation, then, has seen its best days here, and it is now of much 

 greater importance to attend to our existing industries, and preserve and extend 

 them, than to devote all our attention to the comparatively minor chance of replacing 

 them when they fail. It is to meet this new phase of the economic position that the 

 constitution of the Royal Botanic Gardens has been largely changed during the past 

 ten years, and that to the old organisation of Botanic Gardens for the introduction— 



