8 
demand 6 W?S pu ( b,ished and continues to be in good 
prevtous vea?s havinXe VT fr ° m 25 -° C ° pies to 6 °°- Several numbers of 
picvious years having been sold out were reprinted. 
In one number a list of the palms cultivated in the Rota mV rVrrV „ a * 
Receipts and Expenditure of the Botanic Gardens , Singapore, for the year , 9 o 4 . 
# § 
By balance in Bank 
014 42 
Government Grant 
... 1 1,000 00 
By sale of Plants and Seeds ... . _ 
4,779 41 
Expenditure. 
Salaries 
Bills 
Balance 
1 6,-393 
°o 
8 
c. 
6,190 
90 
9,624 
78 
578 
IS 
1 6,393 
00 
1 CO 
Economic Gardens, 
° „ o A ?° rtl0 , n of J the svvafr r PY low-lying ground along the Cluny Road which 
cleared and stumped last year was finished and planted with Para rubber 
i n a °‘ h f r '“*? P atcl ! 0/ ground formerly covered with scrub and Sale pSms was 
. / /?’!-' a "S, p ant , ed V th Sanse ? tera zeylanica, S. guineensis* s! cylindrica 
and S. Kirku, together with Fourcroya gigantea and Musa textilis. * 
There has lately been a demand for these fibre plants, which it is hoped mav he 
extensively planted as a catch crop for Para rubber. An exhibition of fibres prepared 
by Mr Schirmer, at the Agricultural Exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, which attracted 
much attention, was prepared largely from fibres grown in the Botanir HarrVn 
Among the fibres thus exhibited were several different kinds of Sanseviera Yucca 
atfd Ra “me!™™' Fourcr °y a Z i S antea > Karatas Plumieri, Pandanus Kaida, Pine-apple 
leaf-c^ttfngs 1 " 61115 WCTe mad6 the different methods of propagating Sansevieras by 
The Ramie beds were re-dug and a fresh stock planted. 
, . The cultivation of fibres in the Malay Peninsula has been too much neglected but 
it bids tair to occupy a more important position in the future. 
Cotton . Owing to the urgency of cotton cultivation throughout the empire further 
attempts to cultivate cotton of various kinds under different circumstances were made. 
One^ hundred and nine varieties of cotton seed were received from the Director of 
Agriculture of India and three varieties from Jamaica, and one from Kew. The climate 
and soil of Singapore seems, however, quite unsuited for cotton culture, owino- to the 
excess of rain, and the red-cotton bug, Dysdercus cingulatus , in spite of the* use of 
insecticides destroyed nearly all the pods. 
fift^S °f lle c r imp ° rtant e< ; on ° Ia ! ic pla ” ts introduced during the year was a set of 
lit teen kinds of Sanseviera received from Kew Gardens, some of which have too small 
in a , V hl S 7 7 °f fif for , fibre ex . tra , ct ; 0n ’ b , U t Se Y eral wi " probably prove valuable additions 
to the stock of fibre plants suited for cultivation on a large scale here. 
Carlitdovica Jamaicensis , the Ippe-appi, much used in Jamaica for making Panama 
bats and other such fabrics was obtained from Jamaica and is growing well. The 
true Panama hat plant Carlitdovica palmate*, of which a number of plants were planted 
out experimentally last year, have not grown as rapidly as might have been expected. 
