46 MISS L. S. GIBBS ON THE FLORA AND PLANT FORMATIONS 
probably now unknown to us. Owing to the friable nature of the material, 
its erosion must have been very rapid on the mountain, and at the present 
time, where the formation is still present in the coast ranges up to Koung, 
it carries a growth entirely secondary in character. 
Some remains of this sandstone, where protected by a well-established 
vegetative growth, may possibly still be present on the higher parts of 
Kinabalu. 
At Kamburangau white sand is exposed, and the mossy forest which occurs 
on each side of this exposure is possibly due to its presence. Spencer St. John, 
in describing the buttress of the Maraiparai spur, mentions that sandstone 
abuts on the granite, and “ that it appears as if the molten granite had been 
forced up through the sandstone ^ (7. 319). In that case sandstone would 
again coincide with the mossy forest. 
In the centre of the sheltered small forest above and below Pakapaka 
were huge red sandstone blocks, and it was here that Burbidge probably 
camped on his second ascent, as he speaks of carving his initials on the soft 
red sandstone wall of the cave (9. 283). In this area the vegetation is that 
of the serub association of the open serpentine ridge, which, however, 
is eonsidered by Dr. Stapf (17. 115), on the strength of its extraordinary 
endemism, to be the original plant-covering of the old red sandstone. 
Under the sandstone, accepting Dr. Cullis’s tentative hypothesis which 
harmonises well with the botanical inferences, would succeed the basic peri- 
dotite, and the resultant serpentine of the open ridges and the cracks of the 
granite core where it persisted as the latter became more and more exposed. 
This serpentine carries everywhere the same scrub association, but with this 
difference, that, on the summit it is reduced to its hardiest and most plastic 
elements, which exposed there to very uniform conditions have assumed an 
equally uniform mode of growth. Thus the summit vegetation as we find it 
to-day would appear to be only a definite modification of the general serub 
association of the serpentine formation of the mountain. The process of 
denudation is still continuing, and the dwarf sub-summit forest will possibly 
in time recede still farther. That the action of the eroding agencies has to 
:a great extent been retarded, is due to the presence of that forest. Burbidge 
(9. 279), in working over what must be the present dwarf forest area, speaks 
of“ patches an acre or two in extent without any tree-growth, bearing only 
‘a coarse sedge-like association, with giant plants of Nepenthes Rajah” ; 
and Whitehead also (16. 170) describes the “slopes as nearly bare of shrubs.” 
These spaces we did not observe, and possibly, if not overlooked, they have 
since been overgrown with shrubs and small trees. 
With regard to the foreign elements on the summit, I conclude that 
they probably represent an “ opportunity " association. Captain Learmonth 
informs me that *the prevailing winds assimilate to the monsoons in the 
