Alfred Russel Wallace 



top, in which is a good house built by the Government for 

 the old Dutch naturalists who surveyed and explored the 

 mountain. There are a lot of strawberries planted there, 

 which do very well, but there were not many ripe. The 

 common weeds and plants of the top were very like English 

 ones, such as buttercups, sow-thistle, plantain, wormwood, 

 chickweed, charlock, St. John's wort, violets and many 

 others, all closely allied to our common plants of those 

 names, but of distinct species. There was also a honey- 

 suckle, and a tall and very pretty kind of cowslip. None 

 of these are found in the low tropical lands, and most 

 of them only on the tops of these high mountains. Mr. 

 Darwin supposed them to have come there during a glacial 

 or very cold period, when they could have spread over the 

 tropics and, as the heat increased, gradually rose up the 

 mountains. They were, as you may imagine, most in- 

 teresting to me, and I am very glad that I have ascended 

 one lofty mountain in the tropics, though I had miserable 

 wet weather and had no view, owing to constant clouds 

 and mist. 



I also visited a semi-active volcano close by continually 

 sending out steam with a noise like a blast-furnace — quite 

 enough to give me a conception of all other descriptions 

 of volcanoes. 



The lower parts of the moutains of Java, from 3,000 to 

 6,000 feet, have the most beautiful tropical vegetation I have 

 ever seen. Abundance of splendid tree ferns, some 50 ft. high, 

 and some hundreds of varieties of other ferns, beautiful- 

 leaved plants as begonias, melastomas, and many others, 

 and more flowers than are generally seen in the tropics. 

 In fact, this region exhibits all the beauty the tropics can 

 produce, but still I consider and will always maintain 

 that our own meadows and woods and mountains are more 

 beautiful. Our own weeds and wayside flowers are far 



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