BOTANIC GARDEN ii 



native gardener in charge of them informed me that the 

 different species have different and definite hours for 

 the opening and closing of their flowers. I tested his 

 statement in two instances and found the flowers almost 

 exactl}' punctual. There was no cloud in the sky nor 

 appearance of any change in the weather, and the reason 

 for this behaviour is not easy to explain. At Sindanglaya 

 in the mountains a few miles distant is an offshoot from 

 the Buitenzorg garden, where plants of a more temperate 

 climate flourish, and experiments are made on plants 

 of economic value to the country, 



A few hours' journey east from Buitenzorg is Garoet 

 (2,300 feet above the sea), which hes in a beautiful fertile 

 valley surrounded by forest-covered mountains. The 

 climate is an almost ideal one, the nights are cool and the 

 days are not too hot. A very remarkable feature of 

 the country about Garoet is the great flocks, or rather 

 droves, of ducks which you meet being driven along 

 the roads from the villages to their pastures in the 

 rice fields. These ducks differ from the ordinary domestic 

 duck in their extraordinary erect attitude, from which 

 they have been well called Penguin ducks. Whether 

 their upright posture is due to their walking or not I 

 do not know, but they are excellent walkers and are 

 sometimes driven long distances to their feeding grounds. 

 When a duck is tired and lags behind, the boy who 

 herds them picks it up by the neck, and you may some- 

 times see him walking along with a bunch of two or 

 three ducks in either hand. 



Others of our party visited Djokjakarta and the 

 Buddhist Temples of Boro-Boder in Central Java and the 



