FROM SINGAPORE TO BANJERMASSING. 265 
a very handsome ivory-white foliaceous lichen, without fruit; there was 
a little pendulous Appendicula, with thick equitant leaves and minute 
axillary purple flowers ; and another curious little plant of the Orchis- 
family, remarkable in having no leaves or stem—it consists merely of a 
few radiating fleshy fibres adhering to the tree ; from the centre rise two 
or three spikes, bearing a few minute yellowish-green flowers. I have 
since seen it in abundance in Java, and especially in the island of 
Banku, where the trunks of Pleurocarpus Indicus, planted about the 
town of Minto, were completely covered by it. A small Fern, I think 
Acrostichum  nummulariefolium, creeps over the trees to the very extre- 
mities of the twigs. About three p.m. we arrived at a small island in 
the river, where the salt-water flood appears to cease almost at once. 
The Nipa disappears as a social plant, a few scattered tufts only being 
seen; and some stunted patches of the Moong, always a freshwater ` 
Palm, begin to rise here and there above the j ungle. The island takes 
its name, Pulo Pullas, from the abundance of a beautiful little scarlet- 
fruited Zicuala, so called. From this change in the vegetation, as well 
as from the presence of the island and a sand-bank, which reduces the 
depth to a fathom and a half, it is probable that at this point the 
freshwater stream and the flood tide exactly neutralize each other; and 
indeed above this, though the stream became less rapid, and its level 
rose on the flood-tide, we had no more current up the river. I saw 
today the first indications of elephants, or at least of some very large 
animal, coming to the river to drink. Our wooden anchor would not 
hold tonight in the soft mud, so we were obliged to make fast to a 
tree, though the men professed to be horribly afraid tigers would leap 
into the boat. We had another alarm tonight, for, being close to the 
bank, the rising tide jammed us under an overhanging tree; but the 
night was fine, and we soon got all clear, just as the old steersman 
saluted the dawn with a most dreary noise, by blowing into a bamboo, 
which he called twong-twong. | 
28th. Off again at five a.m. The Nipa has quite disappeared, and — 
the Padada is much less common, and not so well grown as lower 
down. Another social plant, the Rangas, of the Order Anacardiacee, 
seems to take its place; it is a bushy shrub or small tree, growing quite 
in the water; the leaves are of a bright clear green, when young very - 
red, and it was now covered with fruit, about the size of an egg; the 
cotyledons very large and covered with a thick corky bark. Two other - 
VOL. VII. su 
