COLLECTIONS IN MALAYA 
3 
the top-soil has been destroyed by opencast tin mining, or the land has been planted with rubber 
and oil-palm (which simulate forest) and pineapple (which provides very little cover). At 
present about 75 per cent, of Malaya is still covered with forest, either virgin or secondary. 
Kuala Lumpur in the State of Selangor lies in an intricate mosaic of vegetation, as may be seen 
by the following Table (1), derived from recent i-inch maps, which shows the composition of 
the mosaic of 1,200 square miles in Selangor, including all our major collecting areas. 
Table i 
Vegetation mosaic in Selangor 
(from Audy 1948) 
A. Forest (made up of 34% Dipterocarp Forest, 7% Swamp Forest, and 
2% Mangrove) 
Coastal mudbanks 
Water (rivers, lakes, and mining pools) 
43 per cent. 
I 33 33 
I 33 33 
Total virgin country (mostly Forest Reserves) ... 45 ,, „ 
B. Plantations (nearly all rubber) 
Scrub (1% being clearings in rubber) 
35 per cent. 
12 ,, ,, 
Total scrub and plantations ... 47 „ „ 
C. Villages, town, squatters and Malay reserves, including domestic waste 
land, small native gardens, etc.. ... ... ... 5-7 per cent. 
D. Mining areas, mostly scrub and shallow pools ... ... ... ... 1-3 ,, ,, 
During the Japanese occupation an attempt was made to improve the output of homegrown 
food by clearing areas of forest or rubber plantation and settling them with market gardeners. 
Laudable though this idea may have been, it did not succeed too well. Large areas were 
cleared but never brought under effective cultivation, while other farmsteads were soon 
abandoned and “squatter ” areas in varying stages of neglect appeared. The cleared land was 
soon overgrown by the intractable tall thatch-grass “lalang'’ (. Imperata cylindrical, which takes 
fire easily and burns with little damage to its rhizomes but with the destruction of any 
regenerating forest growth. The nett result was to add to the waste-land of Malaya. This 
was probably largely responsible for the post-war increase in the incidence of scrub typhus : 
250 recorded cases in the three years 1939 to 1941, and some 1,020 cases during 1947 to 1949. 
The faunae of these different parts of the vegetation mosaic are illustrated in Table 2, in 
which are shown all the species of potential mite host which have been examined, with an 
indication of their occurrence and abundance in different habitats, and of the abundance of the 
commoner mites upon them. Further details of mite-infestation are given in Table 3. 
A General Account of the Collections 
The major collecting areas in Selangor 
Trapping for the Colonial Office unit is carried out by estate labour, casual employees, 
several groups of Aborigines who collect in the forests, and by certain personnel employed by 
the Kuala Lumpur Municipality. A light van is in constant use for bringing in specimens. 
Mr. Ben Ensoll, Collector for the Selangor Museum (which was almost completely destroyed 
MALAYA , No. 26, 1953 
