554 Ridley. — On Endemism and the Mutation Theory. 
The disappearance of Hedychium coronarium and H. flavescens in 
Ceylon and that of Lantana mixta in Singapore seem to show that this may 
occur. 
Destruction of Species by Man. 
The first botanist that came to Singapore, Dr. Wallich, in 1822 found 
the whole island densely covered by forest, and a few of a wild tribe of men 
known as the Orang Selitar lived chiefly in boats on the southern sea-shore. 
It was the custom, it appears, for ships travelling to the East to go through 
the Johor Straits, to avoid the pirate Orang Selitar and the pirates in Galang 
and the other islands to the south, which shows that the northern part of 
Singapore and South Johor were but little inhabited. 
Wallich’s collections were apparently chiefly made in the south of 
Singapore where the town now stands. Raffles later, to open up the island, 
introduced the Chinese, who felled for export a great deal of the timber 
trees and opened up, cleared, and burnt large areas for the cultivation of 
Pepper and Gambir, moving from place to place as they exhausted the soil 
and firewood. When I arrived in Singapore in 1888 only a very few forests 
remained in the island and the south of Johor. Over the rest of the island 
the forests had been replaced by Lalang grass ( Imperata cylindrica ), Lantana 
mixta , and other introduced plants, and by secondary growth. The sandy 
shores on the south were first planted with rice, then with coconuts ; but 
a patch of the original flora of this area containing Vaccinium , Melaleuca , 
Leucopogon , and Capparis Finlay soniana remained for some time more or less 
unaltered, but has since been destroyed, and as this was the only known 
spot for this beautiful Capparis it is probably quite extinct. 
The remaining scraps of forest persisted, till a few years ago, under the 
control of the Forest Department, but were practically destroyed at length, 
with the exception of a few acres. 
The demand for land for Rubber cultivation finished off most of them. 
The especially sought for trees valued for timber were naturally destroyed 
first, such trees, e.g., as Dialium and Dipterocarpeae. Where the ground was 
cleared on the edge of the forest, the bright sunlight let in destroyed speedily 
many of the delicate herbaceous plants like Pentaphragma Ridleyi , at one 
time very abundant on Bukit Timah, but which has been nearly exterminated 
by the making of a quarry and felling of timber which let the light into the 
rest of the forests. Grass fires on the jungle edge contributed to the 
destruction of the original flora within the forests. 
My early collections here contained nearly all of the species collected 
by Wallich and Maingay, but many were then very rare, and some are now 
undoubtedly extinct. I will mention a few species only known from 
Singapore and now believed to be quite extinct. Capparis Finlaysoniana 
has already been mentioned. 
