Editorial

The frontispiece may not be particularly exciting to the general public, but this new, modest building embodies the extremely welcome news in representing the new Herbarium of the Forest Service in Sarawak at Kuching. This means certainly a milestone in modern botanical progress in this State. Its establishment is due to the energy and tenacity of the forest officers who have during the last ten years done, and are doing, basic research work on the forest composition of Sarawak and Brunei, and to which the name of Mr Browne, Mr Smythies, Mr Anderson and Dr. Brunig will always remain attached. Duplicates of the old but very important collections of Haviland and Hose, Moulton, etc. had for years been housed in the Sarawak Museum, but were badly stored and remained a cinderella because the activities of the Museum were mainly ethnographical, zoological, and archaeological. And although there was recently a temporary honorary curator of plants through the efforts of Mr Seal, the situation became unbearable. But fortunately the darkest hour is before the dawn and it is a great pleasure to all of us that there is now a reasonable place where work on forest exploration and taxonomy of Bornean plants can be performed at Kuching. We offer our sincere congratulations with this achievement to all concerned. May the work and the Herbarium blossom forth in abundant fruitful future development is our ardent wish.