

THE ADMIRALTY ISLANDS. 455 



tooned 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 

 cocoanut trees growing upon them and forming the main 

 feature of their vegetation. 



I landed twice upon the main land. 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 Jungermaninas. 



On one of these tree trunks I found a very curious and rare 

 Fern, known before only from Samoa and New Caledonia 

 (Trichomanes 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 (Ophioglossum pendulum), unlike our humble 

 little English form, otows in abundance, attached to tree stems 

 with long pendulous fronds as much as a yard in length. 



Most of my time during our stay was consumed in the 

 collection of plants, since the Botany of the Admiralty Group 

 was entirely unknown. Several of the ferns when examined at 

 Kew, proved, as was to be expected in such a locality, of new 



