18 MISS L. S. GIBBS ON THE FLORA AND PLANT FORMATIONS 
Antidesma | neurocarpum, and Lasianthus appressus, a shrub with blue 
berries, were collected and a fine Ficus seen. On the slopes. this forest was 
characterised by the depth of the humus covering, consisting of dead leaves 
in all stages of healthy decomposition. The ridges, on the contrary, were 
drier in type, and the character of the undergrowth evidently responded to 
this distinction. 
On the slopes, where leeches swarmed in rain, fine ferns, absent at lower 
levels, formed wide-reaching colonies, such as Cyclopeltis Presliana, Dryo- 
pteris moulmeinensis, Aspidium cicutarium, Schizoloma heterophylla. Palms 
were abundant in parts. 
Higher still, Begonia pubescens, Cyrtandra Gibbsiv with large yellow 
flowers, Pollia sumatrana (white), Globba Gibbsie (white), and another 
(rlobba, allied to G. propinqua (yellow), grew more or less spaced ; whilst in 
a mass of humus at the foot of a tree I found a small group of the delicate 
little saprophyte Cotylanthera tenuis, with light-blue flowers. At 3000' a 
clump of Dendrocalamus Zollingeri in flower seemed to assert the fact that 
cultivation must formerly have obtained here. Possibly it was grown from 
sections left by natives after use as water-vessels, as aptly suggested by 
Beceari in explanation of a similar occurrence in the primary forest on 
Matang (18. 110). Piper stylosum and Selaginella pentagona, the latter in 
erect clumps from 0°50-0°75 m. high, were abundant, together with the 
beautiful blue-tipped S. Wallichii and the creeping S. alopecuroides. 
On the drier ridges /wora stricta, covered with copper-red flowers, and 
Fagrea racemosa grew as small trees, along with the twining Parsonsia 
spiralis, Smilax leucophylla and Demonorops elongatus var. montanus. A ppen- 
dicula torta with Heæmata heterophylla and Davallia solida were epiphytic. 
The undergrowth consisted of Lepidagathis staurogynoides with pretty yellow 
flowers and mottled foliage, prostrate or erect, and colonies of the little 
Begonia Gueritziana with small spreading radical leaves and simple flowering 
scapes. The white Calanthe Gibbsie and the purple Miscobulbum scapigerum, 
with lovely shaded leaves, were of isolated habit. Pteris Dalhousie, an 
interesting record, grew gregariously, while a large group of Geaster velutinus 
was conspicuous in one place. 
Both in the secondary and primary forest the absence of foliaceous lichens 
and thallose liverworts, so characteristic of similar formations in Fiji and 
New Zealand, is conspicuous. This fact has also been emphasized for lichens 
in the primary forest in Sarawak by Beccari (18. 281). 
3. Tenom Tro Kiav. 
At Melalap the Pengallan river skirts the foothills of the Walker range, 
where, on the densely wooded banks, Ficus Miquelii, Nauclea cyrtopodioides, 
