302 



SIR CHARLES BRECE^ G.C.M.G., ON 



package of rubber of the value of twelve shillings was exported. 

 The present annual value of the export exceeds £1,200,000, 

 Eubber, though of many varieties, is entirely a tropical pro- 

 duction and demand and supply are constantly increasing. It 

 may safely be asserted that before long rubber will rival cotton 

 in the importance of the subsidiary interests dependent on it^ 

 and as a factor in animating the struggle of nations of temperate 

 zones for the control of the tropics. 



In the development of our tropical estates, we have hardly 

 touched the surface of their mineral resources. Apart from 

 precious metals and gems the carbonaceous and bituminous 

 minerals of the tropics, for instance, in the allied forms of 

 asphalte and oil, within the small areas already surveyed, reveal 

 possibilities of output likely to prove an imperial asset that is 

 getting to be more and more appreciated. Vast as seem the 

 capacities of the tropics for expansion in agricultural, forest and 

 mineral resources, they seem to have an asset of even superior 

 value in their power resources. The great falls and cataracts of 

 their rivers are beginning to receive the attention of the 

 electrical engineer and are being utilised as sources of electrical 

 energy. To take a single instance. The caves of Mount Elgon 

 in Africa are found to have been the home of vanished races,, 

 chosen under overhanging rocks in such a way that the 

 cascades that fall over them obscure and protect the entrance. 

 The utilisation of these waterfalls for the purposes of modern 

 civilisation is now a question of practical engineering, and the 

 day may not be far distant when the district may become 

 the home of an industrial community able to generate electrical 

 power sufficient to serve half the territory of Africa. 



No economic question of the day is putting the temper of 

 Empire to a severer test than the co-ordination of agencies and 

 methods for the development and distribution of its tropica) 

 resources. Some of these I propose to consider. 



Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 



Dealing first with agricultural and forest lesources, the 

 Eoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew, have for a hundred and fifty years- 

 been the botanical headquarters of the Empire. Since 1900, 

 Kew has been officially recognised as " in the first 'place an 

 organisation dealing with and giving assistance to His Majesty's- 

 government on questions arising in various parts of the Empire 

 in which botanic science is involved," and as having so far " a 

 distinctly imperial character." Generally speaking, the primarj^ 



