Botanical Notices from Java. 47 



grassy surface still remains entirely the same, and this even in districts 

 at present uninhabited by man. How can this be explained except 

 by the operation of earlier cultivation, which in a short time destroys 

 with fire and axe what nature can only create anew in centuries ? It 

 appears however that there is no cause for apprehending that the sanc- 

 tuary of the higher forest tracts, lying at above 5000 feet, will ever be 

 destroyed ; partly because the want of water renders it difficult to 

 dwell there, as the springs in most of the Japanese mountains rise 

 below this region, generally at a height of 3000 feet, and often much 

 lower ; partly also because the Japanese, who love warmth, would 

 be deterred by the great damp and coldness of those tracts, where 

 for the greater part of the year the heights are enveloped in clouds, 

 and where neither rice nor cocoa palms (their chief source of food) 

 thrive ; not to mention the steepness of the a«cclivities. 



•* We soon reached the highest limits of the young coffee-plan- 

 tations, which are here laid out among the forest-trees, and we 

 now entered the moist shady cover of the primitive forests, which 

 clothe the increasingly steeper acclivities. Oaks (Quercus pruinosa 

 and depressa, Bl.) and arborescent MelastomcB prevail in company 

 with a species of fir {Podocarpus amara, Bl.), which became more 

 and more plentiful as we ascended. Our way led us over a narrow 

 steep ridge, which in some parts was scarcely a foot wide, and de- 

 scended abruptly on both sides into deep rocky clefts ; it would per- 

 haps be impossible to climb over it, were it not, like everything here, 

 overgrown with the most luxuriant forest-trees. Above this dan- 

 gerous pass, the Podocarpus amara occurs more plentifully than in 

 other districts, and gives to the woods a peculiar appearance ; their 

 trunks, which at the base are frequently more than six feet in dia- 

 meter, rise perpendicularly from fifty to seventy feet, and separate 

 high up into the round branched and leafy crowns : when the wind 

 sighs through their needle-shaped foliage, and moves the whitish 

 lichens which hang down yards long from all their branches, one 

 might fancy he saw presented to him a northern winter-scene. Con- 

 tinually mists drift past, in which the thermometer falls from three 

 to five degrees. 



"In this region, at about the height of 6000 feet, where the gigan- 

 tic firs gradually become less frequent, we begin to meet with a small 

 tree {Hedera divaricata, Jungh.) wliich gives to the forests a peculiar 

 character, and whose habit involuntarily recalls to mind that of 

 Dracaena. From a short, knotty stem, often scarcely two to three 

 feet high, spring many simple, undivided boughs, which attain a 

 length of from twenty to thirty feet, and diverge on all sides in a 

 straight or slightly curved direction, so that the outermost nearly 

 attain a horizontal position. They are almost everywhere of the 

 same thickness, naked, and only covered at their ends with blossoms 

 and buds and with large petiolated leaves. 



" The higher we ascend the smaller do the trees become, and 

 we meet with Podocarpus imhricata, Bl., a species of fir, which 

 covers many of the steepest acclivities, and whose young juni- 

 per-like (almost pyramidal) trees present to us here, nearly under 



