Tlie Royal Botanic Gardens of Ceylon as 
a Centre for Botanical Study 
and Research. 
BY 
J. 0. WILLIS. 
XT would be difficult to exaggerate the value of travel in 
other countries to the working botanist, especially if 
his work lie in the departments of systematic botany, geo- 
graphical distribution, ecology, morphology, or economic 
botany, whilst to the physiological or anatomical worker 
there are also innumerable problems which can only be 
solved by research in tropical countries. Even though only 
a short visit be paid to a country whose climate and flora 
are unfamiliar, and though no definite piece of research 
work be undertaken, the traveller gains in breadth of view 
and in understanding of the great problems of the science. 
As the present reaction from the exclusive study of plants 
in the laboratory to their study in the field as well gains in 
strength, the necessity and advantages of travel and of study 
and research in other countries will become more manifest. 
The first flora and vegetation the traveller desires to see is 
usually that of the tropical zone, and there is no place where 
he can see it with greater ease than in Ceylon, nor any 
tropical land with so great a variety of climate and vegetation 
in so small a compass and so easily reached from whatever 
headquarters may be selected. In the south-western plains, 
between the mountains of the central part of the Island and 
the sea at Galle and Colombo, the climate and the vegetation 
[Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya, Voi, I., Pt. !.. June, 1901,] 
49-01 
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