SINGAPORE
495
by one or two degrees cooler in the first than in the last. The average fall of rain is found, from the observation of a series of years, to be 92.697 inches; and the average number of days in the year in which rain falls is found to be 180, thus dividing the year almost equally between wet and dry; the rain not being continuous, but pretty equally distributed through the year, January, however, being the month in which the greatest quantity falls. The mean temperature of Singapore is 81°.247, the lowest being 79.55 and the highest 82°.31, so that the range is not more than 2°.76. It would appear from this that the temperature of the island is by 9°.90 lower than that of many other localities in the same latitude. Comparing the temperature now stated with that which was ascertained twenty years earlier, and in the infancy of the Settlement, it would appear that it had increased by 2°.48—a fact ascribed, no doubt, to the increase of buildings, and to the country having been cleared of forest for three miles inland from the town, the site of the observations. The general character of the climate as to temperature is that the heat is great and continuous, but never excessive, and that there is little distinction of seasons, summer and winter differing from each other only by one or two degrees of the thermometer. Thunder-showers are of frequent occurrence, but the thunder is by no means so severe as I have experienced it in Java, and seldom destructive to life or property.
"The botany of this place possesses several interesting considerations. Being a connection-link between the Indian and Australian forms, we have types of both, and many genera of either region. We observe the Indian forms in the natural families. Palnice, Scitamineæ, Aroidea, Artocarpeæ, Euphorbiacea, Apocyneæ, Guttiferæ, Convol- vulaceae, Leguminose, all numerous. The natural families Casuarina, Myrtaceæ, parti- cularly Melaleucae and Proteacea, connect us with Australia. The plants, which usually spring up when the primeval forest has been cut down, and where the bane of all the rest of the vegetable kingdom-the Andropogon caricosum, or Lalang grass-has not taken possession, belong to the following genera :-Melastoma, Myrtus, Morinda, Solanum, Rubus, Rottlera, Clerodendrum, Commersonia, Ficus, and Passiflora. The forest contans an immense number of species of timber trees, most of them of great height and growth. Above two hundred have been collected, and of these about half-a- dozen afford good timber for house and boat-building. The teak is not of the number. The forest also produces the two species which yield the useful gutta-percha, and a fig which affords an elastic gum. But for use these articles, as well as timber, are not obtained from Singapore itself, but from the wider and more accessible forests of the neighbouring continent."
The zoology of Singapore is that of the neighbouring continent, to the exclusion of some of the larger animals--as the elephant, the rhinoceros, the tapir, and the ox. The largest feline animal indigenous to the island is a small leopard, called by the Malays harinau-daan, that is, "the branch" or climbing tiger. But the tiger, an animal unknown to the island in the earlier years of the British Settlement, made its first appearance five or six years later. It seems to have crossed over from the continent, attracted no doubt by the sound of human voices and the lowing of animals. It multiplied greatly, and was supposed to destroy yearly from two to three hundred persons, proving the greatest bane of the Setlement. Large rewards have always been offered for the destruction of tigers ($50 per head), and a good number were captured by pitfalls, but all attempts at their extermination were for many years unsuccessful. The spread of population, however, had its natural result; and although specimens are occasionally met with which have swum the narrow strait between the island and Johore, there are not probably more than half-a-dozen now existing in the jungle. Of the natural family of Mustelide there are two in Singapore-the musang of the Malays (Paradoxurus musanga) and the binturung (Ictides ater), of the size of a badger. Otters are occasionally seen along the coasts, but are rare. The wild hog is numerous, and there are five species of deer, the usual ones of the Peninsula and Sumatra, from the rusa, of the size of a heifer, to the pelandok, which is hardly as large as a rabbit. Among mammals, one species of bat is often to be seen, the same which is so frequent in almost all parts of the Archipelago, the kalong (Pteropus javanicus). This is about the size of a raven, and a troop of them in flight has very much the look of a flock of crows, and by a stranger may be easily mistaken for one. Among reptiles, crocodiles are common in the salt-water creeks and along the shores of the island, but, having an abundant supply of fish, are not troublesome to man. The Iguana lizard, the bewak of the Malays, is not infrequent, and the noisy house lizard or tokay, the take of the Malays, so common in Penang and so much more so in Siam, is also found in Singapore. The esculent turtle is very abundant along the shores of Singapore and the neighbouring islands, and its use as food being restricted to the European and Chinese