THE recent issues of Circulars and Agricultural Journal A of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Ceylon, contain interesting papers on cotton, Hevea brasiliensis, and other native crops. Mr. Lock issues a concise guide to the plots on the Experiment Station, Peradeniya, which will prove useful to visitors, and will, we hope, be the forerunner of a work setting out the general results obtained in the Ceylon experiments and the conclusions to be drawn from them. Mr. Fetch deals with certain abnormalities in Hevea brasiliensis. Nursery plants with twisted stems are frequently sent in for examination and report. The stem generally makes a complete turn at the base, either in a regular curve or a combination of curves and abruptly angular bends; in other cases there are two complete turns, and in a single instance three have been observed. It was found possible to reproduce some of these abnor malities by varying the position of the seed in the soil. The insect pests—which mainly attack the root, since the rest of the plant is to a large extent self-protected by the viscid caoutchouc-producing latex—are dealt with by Mr. E. Ernest Green. Mr. Bamber deals in one pamphlet with tapioca, describing its method of cultivation in Malacca, and in another with the cultivation of strong-growing plants to overrun and “choke” weeds in rubber plantations. The plants suggested are Passiflora foetida and Mikania scandens; crotolaria is also used. When growth has attained its maximum, and before the plants die down, the whole mass of material, usually 12 inches to 18 inches deep, can be rolled up like a huge carpet, leaving the surface soil quite free from weeds. Mr. Jowitt describes several of the oil-yielding grasses, and Mr. Stewart McCall puts in a plea for the more extensive cultivation of cotton. Altogether the papers are fully up to the high standard we have learnt to associate with Peradeniya.