277 



which require to be named. The whole series of cabinets iorm the 

 permanent departmental herbarium. The collection has frequently to 

 be gone over, examined, and cyanide of potassium applied whenever 

 there is a trace of attacks by insects or fungi. 



(4) Duplicates. — The duplicates are all named and numbered to 

 correspond with those in the cabinets, and are distributed to various 

 Herbaria. 



(5) Requirements in Assistants. — All these operations require the 

 greatest care, neatness and accuracy. The Assistants should know at 

 any rate the elements of botany, and be able to draw accurately the 

 outline of a growing plant, and the parts of a flower and seed vessel to 

 show their anatomy. 



Work in Office. 



(6) A great deal of copying for the office has to bedone by the type- 

 writer, and it is advisable that the Assistants should be able to use it. 



Other work consists of cataloguing books, etc., for the Library. 

 Remuneration and Conditions of Employment. 



(7) The remuneration is at the rate of £i0 a year, with £36 as 

 house allowance, altogether £76 a year, payable monthly. 



Twelve days are allowed annually as holidays, at the discretion of 

 the Director, besides the public holidays. A month's notice on either 

 side, without reasons assigned, will be considered sufficient to terminate 

 the engagement. 



DISEASES OF PLANTS. 

 Coffee. 



Various species of coffee are being grown in the gardens experiment- 

 ally. 



Liberian has done well for years at Castleton, and as the only diffi- 

 culty, namely suitable machinery, has been overcome, there is now no 

 reason why it should not be cultivated in districts which either have a 

 plentiful rainfall or a system of irrigation, and at low elevations where 

 Arabian Coffee will not produce a paying crop. 



Some of the coffee planters expressed alarm at the introduction of 

 coffee from Kew or anywhere else, and the following letter was written 

 by me on the subject : — 



31st October, 1896. 



Sir, 



I have the honour to acknowledge your letters of 22nd and 28th 

 instant. 



I regret to think that you are still uneasy about the possibility of in- 

 troducing Hemileia with Coffee plants from Kew, and I will therefore 

 try to be more clear with my reasons for thinking that you need not 

 have the slightest apprehension. 



The whole life history of the Hemileia has been exhaustively studied 

 and worked out in Ceylon by Dr. Marshall Ward, who is now Professor 

 of B jtany in the University of Cambridge. Professor Ward spent two 

 years in this investigation giving up his whole time to it, and there 

 is no disease affecting either plants or animals that is better known. 



There is no Hemileia disease on the West Coast of Africa, nor in 

 Kew Gardens, and therefore it cannot be transmitted from Africa 

 through Kew to Jamaica. 



