156 NATURAL SCIENCE. March, 



Florida in the last days of December ; frost appeared, an unwonted 

 and unwelcome visitor. The fruits on the trees were frozen, next 

 season's buds were blasted, and many a young orchard was destroyed. 

 Hence the higher price of oranges, and the diversion of the trade to 

 our own sunny South. But even thither, as the Revue Rose tells us, 

 this cold wave shortly after found its way, damaging the bananas and 

 the early vegetables of Algeria. Lastly it came to us, and consoled 

 the populace for their lack of oranges, by an abundance of skating. 



Flora of Borneo. 



Dr. Stapf's exhaustive paper on the Flora of Mt. Kinabalu in 

 North Borneo occupies part 2 of vol. iv. of the Linnean Society's 

 Transactions. It is based chiefly on plants collected by Dr. G. D. 

 Haviland in 1892, but the author has also made use of material 

 obtained by Sir Hugh Low more than forty years ago, as well as some 

 more recently acquired by Mr. F. W. Burbidge, who went in search 

 of treasures of horticultural interest for Messrs. Veitch, of Chelsea. 

 The paper includes an interesting account, supplied by Dr. Haviland 

 himself, of his ascent of the mountain, in weather unusually wet 

 even for Kinabalu. The southern spur of the mountain forms, like 

 many Bornean heights, a knife-like ridge a few feet broad at the top. 

 " Along this is a track, probably kept open by deer, on either side of 

 which grow plants. These are almost always in flower, and love the 

 sunshine, which can be here felt even through the mist. Among 

 these plants are notably Vaccinium, Rhododendron, and sometimes 

 Pitcher-plants. A few feet lower down the vegetation is completely 

 changed." " The sides shelved steeply down, and on them grew the 

 sub-summit shrubs with lanky, bent, and angled stems, densely 

 clothed with long damp moss and lichen, and growing from the slope 

 rather than upwards in the struggle for the light." This zone was 

 more than 100 feet in height ; below it came common jungle of mixed 

 trees, shrubs, and herbs. There were no monkeys, and the birds 

 and squirrels were different from the low-country types. At about 

 11,000 feet quite a different region was reached at the foot of the 

 granite cap which crowns the whole. " Here were patches of 

 shrubs in flower, patches of bare rock, and patches of mossy swamps, 

 where grew buttercups, potentillas, and a small white gentian." The 

 plants on the top itself " were stunted, only a few inches high, growing 

 only in the crevices of the rock, to which they had a very firm hold, 

 so that it was difficult even with both hands to collect them with their 

 roots." In two hollows shrubs were growing; in one, the blood-red 

 rhododendron, in the other, Rub us Lowii. 



Dr. Stapf distinguishes four zones of altitude. The first, the Hill 

 Zone, from the foot of the mountain up to 3,000 feet, almost entirely 

 occupied by cultivated land and young jungle, or secondary forest, 

 which springs up rapidly on abandoned clearings. This secondary forest 

 is essentially evergreen, with all the characteristics of a true tropical 



