472 Botanical Notices from Java. 



plantations are advantageously laid out. In order to obtain the 

 sweet- smelling wood Randai, in which small bee-like but stingless 

 insects (Melipona vidua, V.*) live high up in the crevices of the 

 trunk, and also to measure the height of the trees, I had some Rasa- 

 malas cut down, and found the same results as in 1837 at Tjanjor; 

 that is to say, fifteen feet for the circumference of the trunk at about 

 twenty feet from the ground, ninety to 100 feet for the length of 

 the stem, up to the height at which it is undivided and column- 

 formed, and at which height it generally, but often not at all, slightly 

 decreases in thickness, and fifty to eighty feet from the first bifur- 

 cation up to the top of the crown of foliage — therefore 140 to 180, or 

 a mean of 160 feet, or most frequently 150 feet for the whole tree. 

 When a space of the wood is felled, and the primitive forest, as is 

 the case on the edge of the new coffee-plantations, is cut off in 

 sharply defined lines from the cleared spot, on which the observer 

 stands, there is nothing similar to the majestic appearance of such a 

 forest, which is seen at one view in its entire height. The trunks 

 rise straight up, and from their whitish colour, stand off in sharp 

 lines from the dark background of the wood, in regular rows, as if 

 they were columns which giants had turned and set up here. How 

 small would a cocoa-palm appear by the side of such a giant, like a 

 little switch, reaching scarcely to the first division of the trunk of a 

 Rasamala ! Although the trunks of the Rasamalas are less over- 

 grown with Liana than the other trees, yet I found occasionally the 

 foliage interlaced by a Cissus, the stalk of which, like a tightly 

 drawn perpendicular rope, ascended for a hundred feet upon the 

 stems (Cissus macrophylla, Jgh.). 



" At length, on the 1st of April, the morning sun, which was just 

 rising above the forests of the Megamendong, illumined our path 

 as we began to ascend from Bodjong-Keton through the coffee-plan- 

 tations. Dr. E. A. Forsten (who during his residence here was 

 engaged in entomological and ornithological pursuits) joined me, 

 and we went onwards with good heart and spirit. Our attendants, 

 the twenty Japanese, who with our travelling baggage were loaded 

 with some sacks full of rice and other provisions, welcomed gladly 

 the warm rays of the sun ; for the temperature of 65° F. (14'5 R.) 

 — the thermometer sank even lower in the shade — was sensibly felt 

 by the naked bodies of the natives, accustomed as they are to 

 warmth. The sky was clear and blue, and only a few light fleecy 

 clouds were visible on it. But the high mountain regions and the 

 wide plains in the north, which may otherwise be followed with the 

 eye as far as the Roadstead of Batavia, were covered with a bluish, 

 semi-transparent mist, in which isolated white vapour- clouds floated. 

 The whole mountain-forest lay brightly illuminated before us, and 

 only a streaky covering of clouds rested upon the high tops of the 

 Manellawangie. Inspirited by this fine weather, we ascended the 

 coffee- plantations : Forsten's gun was heard afar through the wood, 

 like a feu dejoie ; but it often cost some poor bird or an Arctitis 

 albifrons, Cuv., its life. On the trunks of the Rasamalas, of which 



* Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau, Hist. Nat. de§ Hymenopt. vol. i. p. 429. 



