NEW GUINEA. 433 



The ship's screw had to be constantly stopped for fear it should 

 be fouled by the wood. The logs had evidently not been very 

 long in the water, being covered only by a few young Barnacles 

 (Balanus) and Hydroids. Amongst the logs were many whole 

 uprooted trees. I saw one of these which was two feet in dia- 

 meter of its stem. 



The majority of the pieces were of small wood, branches and 

 small stems. The bark was often floating separately. The mid- 

 ribs of the leaves of some pinnate-leaved palm were abundant 

 and also the stems of a large cane grass, like that so abundant 

 on the shores of the great river (Wai Levu) in Fiji (Saccharum). 

 One of these cane stems was 14 feet in length, and from 1J to 

 2 inches in diameter. 



Various fruits of trees and other fragments were abundant, 

 usually floating confined in the midst of the small aggregations 

 into which the floating timber was almost everywhere gathered. 

 Amongst them were the usual littoral seeds, those of two species 

 of Pandanus, and of the Puzzle-seed (Heritiera littoralis), fruits 

 of a Barringtonia and of Ipomoea pes caprce. 



But besides these fruits of littoral plants, there were seeds of 

 40 or 50 species of more inland plants, Very small seeds were 

 as abundant as large ones, the surface scum being full of them, 

 so that they could be scooped up in quantities with a fine net. 

 With the seeds occurred one or two flowers, or parts of them. 



I observed an entire absence of leaves, excepting those of the 

 Palm, on the midribs of which some of the pinnae were still 

 present. The leaves evidently drop first to the bottom, whilst 

 vegetable drift is floating from a shore. Thus, as the cUbris 

 sinks in the sea-water a deposit abounding in leaves, but with 

 few fruits and little or no wood, will be formed near shore, whilst 

 the wood and fruits will sink to the bottom farther off land. 



Much of the wood was floating suspended vertically in the 

 water, and most curiously, logs and short branch pieces thus 

 floating, often occurred in separate groups, apart from the horizon- 

 tally floating timber. The sunken ends of the wood were not 

 weighted by any attached masses of soil or other load of any 

 kind. Possibly the water penetrates certain kinds of wood more 

 easily in one direction with regard to its growth than the other. 



F F 



