A Good Botanical Locality. 349 



tion, from its elegance. The stem was not thicker than my 

 wrist, yet it was very lofty, and bore clusters of bright red 

 fruit. It was apparently a species of Areca. Another of im- 

 mense height closely resembled in appearance the Euterpes 

 of South America, Here also grew the fan-leafed palm, whose 

 small, nearly entire leaves are used to make the dammar 

 torches, and to form the water-buckets in universal use. Dur- 

 ing this walk I saw near a dozen species of palms, as well as 

 two or three Pandani different from those of Langundi. There 

 were also some very fine climbing ferns and true wild plan- 

 tains (Musa), bearing an edible fi'uit not so large as one's 

 thumb, and consisting of a mass of seeds just covered with 

 pulp and skin. The people assured me they had tried the 

 experiment of sowing and cultivating this species, but could 

 not improve it. They probably did not grow it in sufiicient 

 quantity, and did not persevere sufficiently long, 



Batchain is an island that would perhaps repay the re- 

 searches of a botanist better than any other in the whole Ar- 

 chipelago. It contains a great variety of surface and of soil, 

 abundance of large and small streams, many of which are nav- 

 igable for some distance, and there being no savage inhabit- 

 ants, every part of it can be visited with perfect safety. It 

 possesses gold, cojjper, and coal, hot springs and geysers, sedi- 

 mentary and volcanic rocks and coralline limestone, alluvial 

 plains, abrupt hills and lofty mountains, a moist climate, and 

 a grand and luxuriant forest vegetation. 



The few days I staid here produced me several new insects, 

 but scarcely any birds. Butterflies and birds are in fact re- 

 markably scarce in these forests. One may walk a whole day 

 and not see more than two or three species of either. In 

 every thing but beetles, these eastern islands are very deficient, 

 compared with the western (Java, Borneo, etc.), and much 

 more so if compared with the forests of South America, where 

 twenty or thirty species of butterflies may be caught every 

 day, and on very good days a hundred, a number we can 

 hardly reach here in months of unremitting search. In birds 

 there is the same difference. In most parts of tropical Amer- 

 ica we may always find some species of woodj)ecker tanager, 

 bush-shrike, chatterer, trogon, toucan, cuckoo, and tyrant-fly- 

 catcher; and a few days' active search will produce more 



