296 VOYAGE FROM SINGAPORE TO BANJERMASSING. 
can write my letters and reports in Dutch, as these things often suffer a 
little by translation. Banjermassing is, as I dare say you know, the 
great place for the Rattan trade ; all the finest ones come from here. I 
hope to send you some of them alive, or at least the seed. Will the 
seeds of Aroidee travel, and if so, in what way best? I could often 
enclose a few seeds in my letters. I send you now some seeds of a little 
Cucurbit, of no beauty, but the section of the young fruit seemed to 
me to show the construction of the pepo with peculiar clearness, and 
therefore I believed it might be interesting to you. It is extraordinary 
what a number of plants there are here, chiefly climbers, with which I 
ami quite familiar, and yet I cannot find a trace either of fruit or flowers; 
and it is strange too how sometimes you find out their secrets by acci- 
dent. A few days ago I was exploring a wooded dingle for coals, when 
one of the men showed me what he was pleased to call jungle potatoes 
just appearing above ground. They had in fact just the appearance of 
half-dried potatoes, but on breaking one I found it to be the fruit of a 
Ficus growing in small groups on the roots. I immediately set to work 
to trace the root to its origin, which was some twenty feet away, and I 
found it proceeded from a tree common enough here and at Labuan, and 
whose fruit I have sought ever since I came out to India. You will 
- have specimens of it among the rest. I like the Fici, many of them 
are such noble trees, and we have here a wonderful variety of them. I 
- send also the seeds of a little Aristolochia, more curious for its pendu- 
lous, basket-like seed-vessels than its flowers, which are small; but at 
. least it does no harm to put them in the letter. When you have seen 
it once flower, you will probably throw it away. I enclose it rather 
. because it happens to be on my writing-table than for any other reason. 
I hope by-and-by to send you the seed of an interesting plant from 
Japan, Corchorus pyriformis, Bl., which is said to afford the fibre of 
which the finest grass-cloth is made. I had the seed from Buitenzorg, 
and it is flowering freely with me. We have here another fine fibre 
plant, the Behmeria candicans, from which was prepared a beautiful 
silky white fibre, which got a medal at the Exhibition under the name 
of Ananas Fibre. It was sent from Java by a Mr. Weber, a gum- 
tree planter. He showed me at his house the medal, the fibre, and 
the plant, which I find also here. 
MM 
