12 MISS L. S. GIBBS ON THE FLORA AND PLANT FORMATIONS 
limited to their pile dwellings on the magnificent river-courses which form 
the only means of penetration into the interior. Consequently those moun- 
tain islands are clothed with primary forest, and in this many of the 
Kinabalu high forest types are represented. Further investigation will 
no doubt add to this common?element. Meanwhile many of these types have 
also been found in the secondary forest of North Borneo, this being especially 
marked about Tenom. 
Il. ITINERARY AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE VEGETATION. 
1. JESSELTON TO TENOM. 
The capital of British North Borneo is situated on Gaya Bay, where the 
spurs of the surrounding sandstone ranges break up towards the seashore 
into low foothills. Between these hills flows a small river, which forms a 
mangrove swamp at its mouth, graced by a picturesque Bajow pile village. 
By the mangrove swamp were the usual members of this association on 
the land side, such as Lumnitzera coccinea, Glochidion littorale, Commersonia 
echinata, Wormia suffruticosa, Acanthus ebracteatus, the wax-covered Cissus 
hastata and Flagellaria indica. 
Above the village the river-bed had been drained, the mangroves uprooted 
and a fine golf course laid down, which abutted on a sugar plantation on the 
old mangrove soil. As the level of the ground rose young secondary forest 
began, which in the natural course of events had displaced the mangroves 
as the silt brought down by the river gradually raised the level of the 
ground. On the edge of a road which bounded the forest I collected Trema 
amboinensis, Alphitonia excelsa, Buchanania florida var. lucida, Guiou pleuro- 
pteris, Artobotrys suaveolens, Rhodomyrtus tomentosus, and the abundant and 
pretty herbaceous shrub, Pavetta sumatrensis, covered with corymbs of white 
flowers. 
It suticed to cross the road to find an association re 'alling vividly the 
Hoturua district in New Zealand. Where it cut through the sandstone, a 
small plant of Anisophyllea trapezoidalis was seen growing against the side, a 
tardy remainder from the original forest, then, farther up the bank, a serub 
growth succeeded, where the graceful shrub Backea frutescens with its wand- 
like branches might, but for the smallness of the flowers, have been taken 
for Leptospermum ericoides, whilst the typical rigid Styphelia lancifolia, 
with its glistening leaves and minute furry flowers, and Gahnia tristis, 
showing its dark brown spikes in abundance, increased the illusion. 
Wrkstroemia Ridleyi recalled W. viridiflora, so abundant in the dry belt 
in Fiji, and indistinguishable from it in habit and colouring. Nepenthes 
gracilis, swarming over the grasses and up any support which did not screen 
it from the breeze, seemed the only representative of Malaya, while the 
