745 GENERAL REPORT ON THE RESIDENCY OF SINGAPORE. 
stimulating manures, owing to the highly remunerative prices that 
have for many years ruled—but when the stimulus is not persever¬ 
ed in, in all the soils of both Pinang and Singapore, excepting in 
one or two favored localities, it soon fades and becomes totally 
unproductive. This cannot in any measure be attributed to the 
climate—for where the soil is rich and this is only to be found in a 
few small circumscribed tracts in Pinang—the tree is found to 
grow and bear plentifully without manure and with very little care 
—asfis the case at its original sites in the Moluccas. Our soil, can 
therefore, not be compared to these rich regions. In advancing 
opinions on the point myself, these may meet with various favor-— 
as I have seldom seen it mooted without considerable discussion. 
It partakes much of the same quality of the other parts of the 
Malayan Peninsula that I have visited—and when compared with 
that standard, the soil can be considered by no means inferior. I 
would hold it superior to the dry soils of the plains, ridges, and un¬ 
dulating hills of Pinang, and Province Wellesley—and considera¬ 
bly so to the same in Malacca, while in its alluvial soils it must 
give place to both these settlements either for extent or fertility. 
In comparing it with the eastern parts of Java, with Bally, and 
the Moluccas, and other islands of the Malayan Archipelago that 
form a part of the great Volcanic Zone which stretches from 
Arracan to Kamtchatka (the only really fertile islands of the Indian 
Archipelago in an agricultural point of view) it must be considered 
very inferior in productiveness. If Marsden’s view be correct with 
regard to the sterility of the late British possessions in Sumatra, 
Singapore must be considered much superior to them, though these 
circumstances hold true, here also, as mentioned by that author, in 
regard to the native cultivation, that the trees are only found 
in perfection in the close proximity ef their houses. The cause of 
this he attributes to the sweepings &c., of the houses ; but in 
Malayan houses these are never lifted from underneath their stilted 
houSes, so such trees only that are below the level of this can 
partake of the benefit; I should therefore rather assign the causes 
of their fecundity to the carbonic acid evolved from the respiratory 
organs of the inhabitants, which forms a food tor the vegetable 
world, the green part of plants when under the influence of light 
retaining and assimilating the carbon, and restoring the pure oxygen 
of which it is compounded to the air ; this is amply proved on 
observing the fruitfulness of trees, situated above the level of the 
houses—whose roots are yet too distant to reach the manure 
beneath. _ . 
Soils. In commencing a detailed description of the soils ot 
Singapore, it may be at first stated, that the undulating and dry 
soils are five times more extensive than the alluvial, which until 
drained are wet soils. In the hilly soils there is not a great diversity 
of quality, and they may be generally described, as red ferruginous 
earth, these are modified by the formations on which they rest; tne 
