TO OUR READERS. 
448 
the assistance which we feel is necessary to make the 
Journal as comprehensive and practical as it ought to be in 
the position which it occupies. The second of our projected 
series of papers is an account of Singapore in all its aspects. 
Its history and system of government has been undertaken 
by a friend $ a general sketch of its' geology and ethnology 
we shall endeavour to offer ourselves ; but a great many 
subjects remain in which we shall be very glad to receive 
assistance. We need only mention its native vegetation 
and animals, of which no good account has yet been pub¬ 
lished ; its cultivated plants; t e numerous arts practised 
by different classes of natives, many of which present curious 
characteristics &c. We hope to see the cultivation of all 
our other fruit bearing trees described as that of the nut¬ 
meg has so well been, and we hope to hear a great deal 
more about the nutmeg itself. We trust our Pinang friends 
will net keep their observations of half a century to them¬ 
selves, but give us their ideas also of the best modes of 
cultivating the spice and other trees. The number of in¬ 
telligent Europeans who now have opportunities of observing 
these trees is very consul:rable, and we beg of them to fa¬ 
vour us from time to time with notes of anything that may 
strike them, in the culture, habit , diseases, time of bearing, 
average produce or longevity, of any cultivated tree or plant 
which grows under their eyes. 
In addition to such original matter as we can give or get, 
we shall insert extracts from works relating to the Archi¬ 
pelago. Short paragraphs are sometimes more thoroughly 
significant when the attention is thus entirely fixed on them 
than when read as part of a whole, for we do not always do 
authors the justice to read as reflectively as they wrote, and 
some part of their meaning not seldom escapes us. 
We shall also give such extracts from books not directly 
relating to the Archipelago as may help us to a better under¬ 
standing of it. Here we must be content to observe what the 
great intellect of Europe illuminates for us. Not a year 
passes there without some brilliant discoveries or thoughts, 
which may serve to light up regions for observation and spe¬ 
culation that have hitherto lain before us as much unseen as 
if they were not. A frequent reverting of the mind to these 
European influences is above all necessary for us in a science 
which is rapidly asserting for itself the highest rank of all, 
but which will not attain it till a generation or two with some 
new William von Humboldts have lived, and which we must 
be satisfied in the mean while to rank as the noblest in its 
