J47/*9 
m 
16 th, Sept ember A® 
Scientific Research 
—JL 
H 
I 
Sir, 
I hare the honour to acknowledge the receipt of 
your letter Ro # 4686/19 of the 23rd, August, 1919, MX and of ite MMM 
enclosure on the eubjeet of the extension of soientifio research* 
2 In dhapter III of ay annual report fer X9I8 I 
e 
have reviewed the position up to the end of 1918 from the point of 
of the foreet department. During the current year work hae 
been done on the local, timbers; a correspondence course of instruc¬ 
tion in timber identification has been published; a card index of 
the vernacular names of Malayan trees hae been begun; the herbarium 
timber eolleotione have been considerably extended; and a further 
considerable mass of miscellaneous information has been reoeived 
* 
and awaits compilation. 
So much remains to be done that it would 
give full employment for many years to a far greater number of 
properly qualified men than we can hope at present to secure, and 
I can only indicate roughly what stops ohjruld bo token in the 
near future, 
4 In my opinion one of the moat important 
* 
tasks to bo undertaken ie the collection in a convenient form of 
alX available information on the local forest eoonamie products. 
Much of this information is buried in the records of the department 
a great deal more ie to bo found in foreign especially Dutch- 
publications, The translation of the standard work on the Beonomlo 
Plants of the Dutch Indies has now been begun, and when this has 
been completed it should be possible with the additional infor¬ 
mation collected locally and with the asslstanoe ef other technic¬ 
al departmeifts publish a comprehensive work on the Commercial 
Products of the ^alay Peninsual similar in oharaoter to Sir 
George Watt’s Commercial Products of India" If full advantage 
