Item 01: Fred Hamilton-Kenny letter diary, 29 August-19 October 1914 - Page 75
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[Page 75]
Then we priced some gold lipped mother of pearl shell in the shops - They wanted 16/ - for a polished pair - The Captain said 3/6 ought to buy so there was 'nothing doing' - We went on to what evidently was acclimatization gardens & here one must again pay a tribute of admiration to the German horticulturists & scientists - The plots were laid out systematically names were up in that grandest of scientific languages – Latin – Ficus elastica - A grove of these big leaved, long scarletshootedbudded rubber trees - Each tree had – unlike what I'd seen at Cairns – several – 6 to 9 inch stems - They were planted close together & the leaves & branches interlocked - Scratch the stem & out came the white sap – that eventually makes rubber - Bromelias formed the intervening hedge between plots - Another plot was full of Theobroma cacao - One We spotted the fruit at once - The narrow elongated leaves growing on these shoots so as to clothe the short trunk struck one - Petticoated to the ground - I naturally took two fine specimens of the fruit