10G THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGED 



" The main island, as viewed from seawards, is seen to be densely wooded everywhere. Along 

 the summits of the ridges cocoanut-palms show out against the sky, accompanied by areca-palms, 

 as can be made out on a nearer view. The general dark-green mass of vegetation on the hillsides 

 is festooned with creepers, and the smaller outlying islands dotted about in front of the main island 

 are all thickly wooded. The inhabited ones are distinguished at once by the large number of cocoa- 

 nut-trees growing upon them and forming the main feature of their vegetation. I landed twice 

 upon the mainland. The trees where the shore is not swampy overhang the sea with immense 

 horizontal branches. The bases of many of the trunks of these trees are constantly washed by the 

 waves ; but they nevertheless have large woody fungi growing upon them, sometimes attached so 

 low down that they are frequently immersed in salt water. The overhanging branches are loaded 

 with a thick growth of epiphytes ; and I had to wade up to my middle in the sea in order to collect 

 specimens of orchids and ferns which hung often only a couple of feet above the water. In other 

 places the shore is swampy, and is either covered with mangroves, or with a dense growth of high 

 trees with tall straight trunks, so closely set that it was very sensibly dark beneath them. In such 

 a grove near Pigeon Island, a small outlier near the anchorage, whilst the ground beneath is bare 

 and muddy, and beset with the bare roots of the trees, the trunks of the trees and fallen logs are 

 covered with a most luxuriant growth of feathery mosses and Jungcrmannicc. On one of these tree- 

 trunks I found a very curious and rare fern, known before only from Samoa and New Caledonia 

 (TricJiomancs peltatum). The fronds of the fern are circular in form, and, connected by a slender 

 rhizome, adhere in rows to the bark. They are pressed absolutely flat against the bark, so as to look 

 like an adherent crust, and have all the appearance of a Riccia or some such liverwort, for which 

 indeed I took them, as I gathered specimens by shaving off the bark. A species of adders'-tongue 

 fern (Ojmioglossum pendulum), unlike our humble little English form, grows in abundance, attached 

 t«i tree stems with long pendulous fronds as much as a yard in length." 



Ki Island, as described by Wallace, 1 is very rugged and mountainous, the mountains 

 rising to a height of three or four thousand feet, and being everywhere covered with a 

 lofty, dense, unbroken forest, like the low, fiat Arrou. Further particulars respecting the 

 botany and physical features of this and the other islands are wanting. 



Little or nothing beyond the foregoing extracts seems to have been published on the 

 botany of the islands under consideration ; 2 even in Miquel's Flora Indise Batavse, which 

 professedly includes them, they are very rarely mentioned, if at all, in the distribution of 

 the species ; Amboina, Ceram, and Timor, on the other hand, being commonly cited. 

 Indeed, the flora of the first-named island forms the foundation of the o-reat illustrated 

 Herbarium Amboinense of Rurnpf, which was written during the latter part of the seven- 

 teenth century, and published about the middle of the eighteenth. It is one of the few 

 pre-Linnean works commonly cited in modern publications. The botany of Timor is also 

 tolerably well known, and forms the subject of a special treatise 3 by the late Professor 

 Decaisne, based upon collections made by the naturalists of various French expeditions. 

 For purposes of comparisons the statistics of this flora will be given below. 



1 Malay Archipelago, p. 176 et seq., London, 1869. 



- A number of plants published by Dr Ed. Beccari had been overlooked : a list is added at p. 223 et seq. 



3 Herbarii Timorensis Descriptio. 



