390 COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AXD TRAVEL 



with the marks, ring forming within ring, the patterns 

 thus made giving at a little distance the effect of 

 tattooing. In some villages quite half the population 

 are affected. The exanthemata are at present unknown. 



6. Flora and Fauna. 



The soil in New Guinea is almost everywhere exceed- 

 ingly fertile, and the country covered with dense virgin 

 forests, although in a few localities, especially on the 

 south coast — of which Port Moresby is one — we find tree- 

 less tracts of barren soil. In German New Guinea are 

 stretches of park-like country not unlike those met with 

 in the neighbourhood of Kina Balu in North Borneo. 

 Thougli small tracts occur here and there, no large areas 

 of the worthless lalang grass, such as those in Java and 

 Sumatra, are known. In the forests the trees, which are 

 perhaps on the whole less lofty than those of Bornean 

 and Celebesian forests, are covered and matted together 

 with creepers and rattans, the dense foliage shutting out 

 the sun's rays, and causing in most places a lack of the 

 smaller herbaceous plants. It is probable that the total 

 number of vascular plants existing in the island is not 

 far short of 4000 species. Omitting the vegetation of 

 the littoral, which has a considerable similarity through- 

 out the Malay Archipelago, and that of high altitudes, to 

 which special reference is necessary, and taking that only 

 of the intervening region for consideration, we find it to 

 be eminently Malayan in character, though perhaps more 

 so generically than specifically. Yet that a strong 

 Australian element is also present is shown by certain 

 species of Droscra, Eucalyptus, Grevillea, Clerodendron, 

 Leptospermum, and phyllode-bearing Acacias ; and, in the 

 mountains, of Epilohmm, Galium, Myosotis, Gaultiera, 



