230 ON SOME UNDESCRIBED MUSCI. 



A Dyak chief informed me that he had been struck down by a Durian 

 falling on his head, which he thought would certainly have caused his 

 death, yet he recovered in a very short time. 



Poets and moralists, judging from our English trees and fruits, have 

 thought that there existed an inverse proportion between the size of 

 the one and the other, so that their fall should be harmless to man. 

 Two of the most formidable fruits known, however, the Brazil Nut 

 {Bertholletia) and the Durian, grow on lofty trees, from which they 

 both fall as soon as they are ripe, and often wound or kill those who 

 seek to obtain them. From this we may learn two things : — first, not 

 'to draw conclusions from a very partial view of Nature; and secondly, 

 that trees and fruits and all the varied productions of the animal and 

 vegetable kingdoms, have not been created solely for the use and con- 

 venience of man. ;, 



The unripe Durian makes a very good vegetable, and it is also eaten 

 raw. In a good fruit season the Dyaks preserve quantities of the pulp 

 salted in jars and bamboos, in which state it will keep the year round, 

 and is much esteemed as a relish with their rice. They seem hardly 

 to appreciate the ripe fruit in its perfection, from the quantities they 

 gather unripe, and from the small value they place upon it, as compared 

 with the Jack and some other fruits. In Borneo great numbers of 

 Durian trees have been planted on the mountains occupied by the 

 Dyaks, and on the rivers' banks in the interior. In the jungle are 

 found two varieties with much smaller fruits, one of them of an orange- 

 colour inside ; and these are probably the originals of the large and fine 

 Durians which seem never to be produced in a wild state. In the 

 tropics as well as in our colder climates, fruits always seem to be im- 

 proved by cultivation. 



On some Undeseribed Species of 



w 



(Plate 



1. 



Mnium insigne. Mitten; diolcum, caulibus sterilibus prociimbentibus, 

 fertilibus erectis subsimplicibus elatis, foliis oblongis nervo excur- 

 rente cuspidatig marginatis serratis basi parum angustatis longc 

 lateque decurrentibus, pericLfetialibus exterioribus longioribus iiite- 

 rioribus brevibus subiUatis angustis, theca longe pedunculata ovali 



normali 



