DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY AND AGRICULTURE. 79

carried on with many remarkable successes, and several
plants thus introduced into Ceylon are so common or so
widely used that they are often supposed to be indigenous to
the country or cultivated there from the earliest times. Of
all the introductions, the most timely and valuable was
perhaps cinchona, which, as mentioned above, was the salvation
 of the planting industry in the dark days of the coffee
disease. Another introduction of great importance was
cacao, and a third, which is now rapidly rising into prominence,
 the Para rubber tree of the Amazon valley.
In recent times the importance of this work has gradually
decreased as most of the valuable products have one by one

GREAT CIRCLE, PERADENIYA GARDENS.

been introduced into Ceylon. There are now but few
products which have not been tried at one time or another,
and there are no longer any important products in which, as
in the cases of cinchona or rubber, the competition is only
with wild forest produce or, as in the case of tea, with
produce grown by backward races with primitive methods.
Nearly all important tropical products are now being
systematically cultivated by enterprising European or
American planters or Governments, with all the aid which
science or politics can give, and the competition is becoming
daily more severe. It is now of greater importance to keep
and improve those industries that already exist than to look