Aug. 1, 1902.] 
TFIE TROPICAL 
AaiilCULTURIST. 
77 
factory to be manufactured into flake or pearl tapioca. 
This plant was alwaya cultivated by the Uliineee. 
Only three crops were taken off the land. Its cultiva- 
tion, often a very paying one, was said to injure 
the soil, and so was not one upon which the Govern- 
ment looked with much favour. Tapioca and sago 
were, of course, used for many othei- purposes than aa 
food. 
Gambier, cultivated entirely by the Chinese was a 
climbing shmb. It wag always grown in the open field 
in the form of bushes, which was severely cut every 
year. The bianohos and leaves were then t^ken to the 
boiling sheds, and, after going through various pro- 
cesses, the gambier was shipped to Europe for the 
use of tanners. Another, a totally different plant, 
the mangrove, produce a tan. stuff which was now 
finding its way into our markets. The mangrove was a 
tree, growing on the edges of tidal rivers and sea- 
shores, wherever they were muddy. This particular 
tan-stuff was also used in combination with indigo 
as a dye-stuff by the Chinese. Indigo, however, was 
not a large or important cultivation in the Peninsula. 
It was only grown to meet a small local demand. 
Pepper was another plant generally cultivated by 
the Chinese, usually by gambier planters. It was 
raised from cuttings and climbed up large stems or 
posts. Formerly ;t had been a highly priced article, 
Dut of late years had fallen iff very much audita 
cultivation in the Straits had diminis-hed. Now 
however, the price had risen and the Chinese and 
Malays had recommenced planting. 
The Straits Settlements were famous both for nut- 
mega and cloves, which were also chiefly cultivated 
by the Chinese. The nutmeg, as grown in the 
Straits, was quite a small bushy tree with deep 
green leaves and fruit resembling a small peach. 
When ripe the husk split partly open, exposing a 
black seed, covered with a beautiful scarlet net- 
work. This net-work, the mace, was taken of when 
the fruit was ripe and dried in the sun. It was often 
mora valuable than the nutmeg itself. 
This cultivation was an old established one. In 
1848 Singapore alone supplied over four million nut- 
mega, but in 1860 a disease was developed which 
entirely destroyed the cultivation in that place, and 
nearly did so in Penang. European planters had 
been rained, and their estates and houses sold for 
very small sums. The Chinese then started the cul- 
tivation in Penang, and had kept it up to the present 
time. 
Mr. Ridley, not long ago, had his attention called 
to what he considered the same disease, and on in- 
vestigation he found it due to a minute beetle which 
burrowed into the bark of the tree, beneath the 
ground, so that its presence was not noticed until, 
by its burrowe, the cambium, or living layer of the 
bark of the tree, was destroyed and the tree ap- 
peared to die suddenly. Had this discovery been 
made in 1860 the cultivation could easily have been 
saved. This was, he ssi-i, an excellent example of 
the importance of the entomologist to the planter. 
The most important native cultivation in Singa- 
pore was the pineapple. The plants grew from cut- 
tings, placed close together, and completely covered 
the ground. The fruit, when ripe, was cut and 
brought into the town in cartloads to the preserving 
factories. The industry of tinning pines was a large 
and very remunerative one. By far the largest 
number of the best preserved pines in the markets 
of the world came from Singapore, where the price of 
a pine varied from ^d, to a penny a piece. The 
plants produced fruit nearly all the year round, were 
very easy to cultivate, grew in the worst of soils, 
and its only enemies were porcupines and wild pigs. 
From the leaves of the pine a very beautiful fibre 
was extracted. The leaves of the ordinary varieties, 
however, wore too short to be used successfully for 
this purpose, the most suitable leaves being from 
plants in waste ground that had grown up witli graaa 
and scrub among them. 
The Malay Peninsula was remarkable, according 
to the mineralogis'-, for having given samples of 
almost all the known elements, but these were so 
sparsely and generally scattered over the whole 
region that the expense of collecting most of them 
would hardly repay the cost. Tellurium, wolfram, 
and titanium were comparatively common. Gold, 
silver, lead, zinc, copper, antimony, and other 
metals all occurred in small quantities widely scattered 
over the country ; but little mining had been done 
except for gold and tin. In former ye irs the Peninsula 
produced a good quantity of gold ; the yield, however, 
at the present time was but small. 
Tin was the mineral of the country, being found 
there in gieat abundance; in fact, more than one- 
half the world's supply was derived from the Pen- 
insula. The greater part of the mines were alluvial, 
though lodes had been found and worked. Rich 
beds occurred in the stream valley.f at the base 
of the bills iu Selangor .and Perak, and were worked 
by the Chinese, who dug to no great depth, and 
washed the alluvium with very primitive sluices. The 
tin was sold to Euiopean firms, melted into ingots at 
Singapore, and then exported. 
In conclusion, Mr. Ridley said that in the course 
of a single lecture it would be impossible to give 
more than an idea of the great wealth of resource 
of the colony. He had attempted to describe rather 
the peculiar vegetable products of the country, so 
as to show what had been done in the introduo- 
tion and cultivation of new and exotic plants during 
the last half-century. When Sir Stamford RafQes 
planted the English flig on Singapore Island in 1819, 
it had been inhabited only by about 200 fishermen 
and pirates; now it was the most important port in 
Eastern Asia, with a population a thousand times 
as large. Then the Native States had been in a 
constant state of war and anarchy, and the natural 
wealth of the country was neglected ; now, owing to 
the energy of the white m^n, aided by patient hard 
work of the Chinaman, the forests had been felled, 
mines opened up, cultivation introduced, aud com- 
merce developed. An era of justice, freedom, and 
peace to all had been inaugurated, and the country 
had become one of the most thriving of our tropical 
colonies. 
There were still, however, large areas of country 
practically unexplored, and doubtless much mineral 
wealth untouched ; aud Mr, Ridley was of opinion that 
the colony was only really in its infancy, and that 
gradually and steadily the work of progress would 
continue year by year, and he was confident 
that the future of the Malay Peninsula would be one of 
great and increasing prosperity. 
The lecture throughout was illustrated by a 'well- 
selected series of slides, many of which had been 
specially prepared. 
The chairman, in proposing a vote of thanks '• for 
a very attractive, lecture, " referred to Mr. Ridley'3 
commendable simplicity of language, and to his 
avoidance of technical expressions, which had enabled 
all those present to carry away every single piece of 
information which he had been good enough to impart 
to them. 
Sir Cecil Clemeuti Smith said he should like to 
take this opportunity of drawing attention to the 
work that Mr. Ridley, and the Directors of other 
Botanical Gardens, were doing in going out to the 
Colonies and devoting themselves with ardour and 
zeal to economic botany. They, in a quiet and un- 
obtrusive way, were winning victories over nature of 
which the ordinary man in the street knew abso- 
lutely nothing. They did not get honours thrust 
upon them or mentioned in the newspapers, but 
their work was neverthless of extreme value in for- 
warding our efforts of making human life more en- 
durable and more delightful. Mr. Ridley's labours- 
only a small portion of which he could have referred 
to that evening — in experimenting on the cultivation 
of plants, and the similar work of the Directors of 
