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safer. Monocotyleclonous plants like bananas, sanseviera, etc., would 
be safer intercrops still as they are not at all adapted to act as hosts 
to pests of woody Dicotyledons. 
The Editor’s note, too, as to science on plantations is much to 
the point. He says our only complaint is that the work which any 
one officer is expected to do is colossal and of such a diverse character 
that the time necessary for searching investigation and research 
is never available. This is very true. An agricultural Botanist is, 
at least in the British Empire, expected to keep a stock of every 
conceivable economic plant and be ready at a minute’s notice to 
give the latest information extracted from some fifty monthly 
periodicals as to its cultivation, industry and commerce, and at 
the same time to report from experiment how it has succeeded in 
his region, and to know the life history of every pest likely to attack 
it and how to kill it, to maintain in good and ornamental condition 
a garden often as large and far more varied in contents than a 
decent sized estate, to keep and add to a herbarium and a museum 
of local products, as well as a library, to conduct a very 
extensive correspondence with planters, merchants, investors and 
other people, and interview a large number of them as well, to write 
and publish periodical reports or journals, and frequently also to give 
lectures from time to time, and export for sale or exchange seeds and 
plants, sometimes on a very extensive scale, to carry out researches 
and experiments, many of which really require undivided attention 
for months, and to do anything else his Government may happen to 
think he can do. Formerly one or at most two men were supposed 
to be quite sufficient to perform this work, and the general public 
were puzzled to know how with this work he could fill up his time. 
But things are altering and reluctantly Colonial Governments are 
allowing increases in the staffs of agricultural establishments and 
making progress in Agriculture more possible all over the Empire. 
Some other nations have realised the necessity sooner, but the fact 
that the importance of research in Agriculture is beginning to be 
realised by our nation at last is a decided forward step. 
The increase in cultivation of Para rubber last year was 
phenomenal, not only in the Native States but in the Colony, as well 
as in many other parts of the world. The waste grounds of Singapore 
island useless for so many 'years after the disappearance of the 
gambier and pepper plantations, are now being covered with Para 
rubber, and so great is the demand for plants that a considerable 
area of swamp land on the Orchard Road in Singapore is being 
converted into a large nursery of Hevea seedlings, the seed being 
imported from Klang in tongkang loads. 
As to Malacca the miles of country covered with lalang, which 
formerly were so conspicuous and depressing, are now flourishing 
rubber estates, and thanks to rubber, and to some extent the railway 
Sly 
