42 MISS L, & GIBBS ON THE FLORA AND PLANT FORMATIONS 
then rising steeply all round it was intersected in every direction by innumer- 
able cracks, into which all the vegetation was crowded, the intervening 
granite surface being absolutely bare and water-worn. 
This vegetation consisted of shrubs, which towards the base of the granite 
were about 1 metre in height. Here they receive the surface-water, 
and are to a certain extent sheltered by the dwarf forest, but as they 
become more exposed to wind and radiation effects they are gradually 
reduced in height to 0:25 m. or even less. They were still of the serpentine 
ridge and dwarf forest facies, and seemed to be its plastic survivals :— 
Eurya reticulata, Leptospermum  recurvum, Ilex revoluta, Styphelia suaveolens 
and S. Learmonthiana, Diplycosia kinabaluensis and Rhododendron ericoides. 
We mounted steeply to the right, and here Umpoh, the son of Kaboung, 
with a grace that would have done credit to a minuet, offered me his hand, 
and we ran up the steepest part in three laps; an excellent method of 
negotiating steep and slippery granite with a sure-footed companion, when 
not rubber-shod. It was a choking sensation for some time, but to observe 
that Umpoh was just as distressed gave some satisfaction. 
Once over this, the worst part, we rose to the left, where the waters of 
the Kadamaian spread over the smooth granite wall, filling all the 
eracks and holes with water, covered with an appreciable film of ice, about 
5 mm. thick. The Dusuns, exclaiming with wonder, sank on their knees, 
hastily filling their “siri” boxes with what to them must have seemed a 
miraculous substance. With true British regard to fact, they were duly 
warned of the consequences, but, I was glad to see, with no effect. If it 
disappeared as miraculously as it appeared, “ their's not to reason why,” the 
* Hantus ” had but claimed their own. 
This spot was unusually bright and gay with the yellow flowers and silvery 
foliage of Potentilla leuconota, another of the far-famed gems of the mountain 
flora, and with P. Mooniana, also in full flower, but dressed in sober green, 
both known from the Himalaya and also from New Guinea. With them 
the carpeting Pilea Johniana and Haloragis micrantha were associated ; 
but though I worked over the rock very carefully nothing else was seen, 
except a small colony of Centrolepis philippinensis in little orbicular patches 
on the edge of a sheltered bay. These plants were purely chasmophytes, like 
all those on the granite core, and the fact of their branches spreading over 
the rock proves that the water is perpetually streaming here, otherwise they 
would be cut back to the edges of the cracks—as is elsewhere invariably 
the case—by the intense insolation and radiation from the granite, which 
immediately burns back lateral branches. 
Above this wall the rock, through which the Kadamaian had cut a shallow 
channel, flattened out. The plants in the cracks were now reduced in height, 
though the prevailing species remained tne same. Crossing Low’s Gully 
