150 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



but that is tedious, and it spoils the flowers ; pricking the leaves all 

 over with a penknife or a fork, so as to let the water escape, is a great 

 assistance to the drying of Orcliidece and Hoyas, but the specimens 

 look unsightly after it; and chloride-of-calcium paper is too much 

 trouble, except for an occasional pet specimen. I now simply put the 

 plants into a large bottle with weak spirit for one or two nights ; this 

 effectually kills them, and an endosmosis goes on in the tissues, which 

 breaks them up, and makes them dry almost as quickly as other plants. 

 You will see whereabouts, in my collection, T began this system, by the 

 much better preserved state of the Orckidea. 



I suppose that to have collected, in so small a space of country, 

 sarly 1200 species, is to have been so far pretty successful; and yet 



I do not think I have much more than half yet, even in the region I 

 have explored. The larger timber-trees I can get, of course, only 

 accidentally, from time to time, the large climbers still more rarely, and 

 the parasitical plants are hardly to be caught, except by cultivating 

 them, which I do as far as I can. The marshes I have not half done 

 with, and of the Salt-water Flora I have hardly one plant yet. To the 

 mountains, properly speaking, I have only been for one or two days, 

 and have not been much more than 1000 feet high, so there is enough 

 still before me. What I could effect if I had nothing else to do I know 

 not, but I believe that this island is verily the Brazil of the East. I 

 have not found a Rhododendron yet ; there must be some among the 

 fine mountains I see before me where I write. T found one near Brune 

 at about 700 feet; I think you have specimens of it; it was a weak, 

 decumbent, radicant plant, beautiful enough, but not remarkable in its 

 genus. Podostemacecc too I have not seen, but I fancy our brooks 

 here are hardly rocky enough : I may get some among the mountains. 

 The Rafflesia eludes me, like a "Will o' the wisp;" I cannot but be- 

 lieve it is here, the natives have so accurately described it to me ; and I 

 have been shown three localities, all abounding in one large species of 

 Cissus, but I have not yet found it. Once indeed a friend sent me 

 what he supposed was a Rafflesia, but it was a great Amorphophall '/> n ", 

 just as livid and as stinking as the real Simon Pure, and moreover very 

 welcome to me, because I had not before seen it ; but the Rafflesia re- 

 mains introuvable. 



If you have not heard of it before, it will interest you read a passage 

 from a letter I received from Mr. Binnendijk, the sub-curator of the 

 Huitenzorg Garden (a good friend of mine, and I believe an excellent 



