112 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



f^erminating. Tlioiip^li 60,000 plants were successfully raised 

 from it by the late j\Ir. M'lvor, I only received the £50. 



'' The seed taken by the Netherlands Government cost it 



barely £50. . 



" Such then is the ' story * attaching to the now famous 



•CineJiona Ledgerianay the source of untold Avealth to Java, 



Ceylon, and, I hope, to India and elsewhere. I am proud 



to see my ^ dream 'of close on forty years ago is realised; 



Europe is no longer dependent on Peru or Bolivia for its 



supply of life-giving quinine." 



In my new locality I experienced, as at Kosala, the same 

 difficulty iu obtaining herbarium specimens of the great trees, 

 Avith a better opportunity of verifying the fact that the bulk 

 of those that had been felled w^re really barren. The fallen 

 trunlcs, however, afforded an abundant harvest of ferns ; while 

 on the surrounding mountains, several of them quiescent 

 volcanoes, which were higher than any I had yet visited, I 

 was bappy in gathering many shrubs and plants which I had 

 not before seem Close to my door grew one, our common rib- 

 grass (PI a nta go major), which I would have passed by at home 

 as a rank weed, but 1 gathered it here with real affection, as 

 much '' for auld acquaintance sake," as in sympathy with its 

 distant exile and inexorable durance^ with a few compatriots, 

 on these unquiet peaks, which the hot surrounding plains 

 have made an island-iii-an-island prison, more hopeless to 

 escape from than the most ocean-compassed speck. At 4500 

 feet above the sea I found a small soecies of 



iZyp 



(if. 



here and there, about 5000 feet, appeared purple violets 

 (F. alata\ increasing in abundance with the ascent through 

 woods of magnolias and chestnuts, their stems clothed with 

 orchids, Freyciuetias, climbing aroids and lycopods, and on 

 whose floor the dreaded Upas dropped its fruits. 



Beneath the shady canopy of this tall fig no native will, if 

 he knows it, dare to rest, nor will he pass between its stem and 

 the wind, so strong is his belief in its evil influence. 



In the centre of a tea estate not far off from my encampment 

 stood, because no one could be found daring enou2:h to cut it 



down, an immense specimen, which had long been a nuisance to 

 the proprietor on account of the lightning every now and then 



