9 
successful teachers from the preceding' year’s elementary course, thirteen 
classes were held, each of i% to 2 hours, and several excursions to different 
parts of the island were arranged. These excursions were attended also by 
the teachers who had joined the advanced class in the preceding year. The 
classes have shown that there is abundant talent in Singapore for the 
study and teaching of Biology, not to mention eagerness, if only illustrated 
books can be prepared as guides and for reference. 
HERBARIUM WORK AND OTHER INVESTIGATIONS 
Mr. Corner spent the greater part of his spare time working in the 
general herbarium in continuance of his undertaking to write a book on the 
common trees of Malaya. It has not yet been possible to cover the whole 
botanical groundwork for the book on account of the technical difficulties 
in the botanical nomenclature of the common trees. As the book offers the 
opportunity of bringing the botanical names of the Malayan trees into 
agreement with those used by the Dutch botanists in Java, who have given 
to the subject a great amount of fundamental research, it is important that 
the errors in Malayan systematy should be corrected as far as possible. The 
photographs for the proposed book were completed, however, and the blocks 
will be made in 1938. Mr. Corner also completed his revision of Ficus, 
subgenus Synoecia, which is a group of some 17 species of climbing figs 
with very large, beautiful fruits and which is distributed from Burma and 
Formosa to New Guinea. Special thanks are offered to the Botanical 
Departments at Buitenzorg, Calcutta and Manila for the loan of specimens 
for this investigation. 
Mr. Furtado carried on the routine of the herbarium in the absence of 
Mr. Henderson in Penang. Pie continued his studies on Malayan palms 
and determined a large number of collections. As palm-specimens are 
usually bulkier than those of other plants, it has been necessary to order 
for them large-sized herbarium-sheets, as is also the method at Kew and 
Berlin. There was a delay in the arrival of these .sheets and, therefore, 
Mr. Furtado transferred his activities to the Malayan aroids. He studied 
particularly the genus Homalomena which is one of the bigger and more 
difficult of common aroids in the country. The species appeared to be 
extraordinarily variable in every character and the variation appeared to 
depend not only on the age of the plant but on such environmental condi¬ 
tions as soil, exposure, flooding and humidity. The greatest variation was 
found in species which grew on stream-sides and on rocks in waterfalls where 
they were subjected to a graded intensity and frequency of flood and spray. 
These apparent variations had been the basis of numerous species; and the 
problem was to discover how far they were merely modifications of indivi¬ 
duals of the same species under different conditions and how far they should 
he regarded as hereditary and specific. Mr. Furtado thus found it necessary 
to combine ecological studies with systematic. 
In the cryptogamic herbarium, the Director continued his studies of 
ferns and prepared for publication a paper on the genus Teratophyllum, 
thus completing his survey of the climbing ferns of the Malaysian region. 
This group of ferns has exceptional interest and no general survey of it 
had been published. Thanks are due to the authorities in charge of the 
herbariums in Buitenzorg, Manila, Brisbane and Washington for the loan 
of specimens. 
A new exchange of specimens was started with the Director of the 
Botanic Gardens and Herbarium at Berlin. The Gardens Herbarium 
received from Berlin about 500 duplicate specimens of Ledermann’s collec¬ 
tion of plants from New Guinea. This represents about half of the total 
