Report by the Colonial Engineer on the Timber Forests ii» the Malayan Peninsula. 
Colonial Engineer’s Office, 
Singapore, 21st June, 1879, 
Sir, — In obedience to the instructions of Government communicated in your letter, Colonial 
Secretary, '"yg 0 , of the .1 of h Ma} r last, I have now the honor to transmit a Return (marked A) 
of the principal forest trees, indigenous to the Straits Settlements and Native States of the 
Malayan Peninsula. 
The preparation of this Return has unavoidably taken some time, owing to the limited 
amount of data at my disposal, but with the assistance of Mr. Bayliss and Officers of the Works 
Department, and Captain Douglas, H. B. M.’s Resident at Selangor, and others, together with a 
reference to Colonel. Low’s dissertation, and the result of experiments made by this Department 
in the various woods in the Settlement, some valuable information has been got together in the 
Return, though it is as yet , I am aware, far from being as complete as could he desired. The 
botanical names of the trees have been for the most part entered by Mr, Murton, Superintendent 
of the Botanical’ Gardens. 
• 
* When the densely wooded forests of the Peninsula are opened up, and this is now taking 
place by the advent of planters from Ceylon., we shall then doubtless become acquainted with 
much valuable timber which, like the ‘Jo- .m *ak, ‘ will he found useful for exportation to 
India., the Mauritius, and other places 1 .a favored. 
On the further points m ‘tug which the Right Hon’blc the Secretary of State has 
requested information, I havi nod it better to throw the whole into a series of answers to the 
questions quit, which will he f< bud in Return B. 
w • ■ 
I have, &c., 
J. P. A. McNAIR, Major, e a., ^ 
Colonial Engineer and Survey or- General, 
% Straits Settlements, 
To The Eon' hie 
The Colonial Secretary. 
Copy oj' Colonial Engineers Minute on Survey, 
4e 0 _5 
7 8 
dated 27th August , 1878. 
His Excellency refers to the question of our rainfall, and the relation that it bears to the 
retention or otherwise of our forest land. This is a point of so much general interest that I may 
be pardoned if I suggest that if it he taken up by the Principal Civil Medical Officer, who now 
possesses some verysvaluable meteorological records, which can he father supplemented from 
data at the disposal of the Municipal Commissioners. 
Briefly, one would say that we depend for our supply almost entirely from the ocean, and a 
preponderance of winds across it at a certain temperature gives us an additional allowance as at 
present ; we get little or nothing from re-evaporation. 
The distribution of rain depends a good deal on position, height, direction of mountain ranges 
and the like, and if there happens to he great condensation at a particular point, then the winds 
come to it from every quarter. 
In looking, a* some tables taken thirty years ago, I find that our average rainfall has not in 
any way diminished, though the land Luis been largely denuded of forest. 
There is, however, one method by which wo may sustain a loss by permitting the indis- 
criminate felling of our jungle trees on hill tops, I allude to that by evaporation ; and it is perhaps 
to this that His Excellency more refers. Doubtless if the land is laid bare to the full power of a 
tropical sun, evaporation will go on at an enormous rate, and this would be an appreciable factor 
in a climate such as ours. In this view it might seem to His Excellency advisable to reserve the 
hill of Bukit Timah, and a considerable distance round its base as a “ Crown ” reserve 
absolutely. 
J. F. A. McNAIR. 
