138 
developed. The female plant grows immediately behind the 
beach-vegetation near the cone of tumbled stones and masses 
of ash, and is quite conspicuous; the other plant, a male one 
was found by Mr. Beumér in 1919 and flourished more under 
the trees. The two are respectively 1.20 and 0.95 M. high; they 
both possess stems that rise upright from the base, whica 
makes it difficult to believe that this pair of robust plants 
should have sprung from pieces of trunk washed ashore. The 
presence of such big young Cycas-plants consequently does not 
warrant the conclusion that plants have remained from before 
the eruption. There remains of course the possibility that seeds 
or rhizomes of plants that grew there before the eruption 
should have been preserved, but this would only have created 
a possibility of the development of plants that can grow on 
bare slopes. Moreover the first pioneer plants of the flora men- 
tioned by Trevs were such whose seeds can be easily distri- 
buted by winds or sea-currents, neither does one as yet find 
genuine forest-plants mentioned in Psnzie’s article. It is difficult 
to assume that these forest-plants on Krakatau should have 
been spared as seeds or rootstocks for so many years and should 
have been able to sprout again when circumstances so long 
afterwards favoured their growth. 
For this proofs would have to be adduced. Indeed the study 
of the flora. of Sebesy where the destruction has not been $90 
thorough, as witness e.g. the far thinner layer of ashes that 
settled on this island, and where I found a very differently 
composed flora (more nearly resembling what is to be found 
on similar grounds in Java and Sumatra) is to me additional 
proof of Krakatau having indeed been absolutely destroyed; 
the same conclusion is arrived at by Dr. Dawmerman') in his 
discussion of the new fauna of these islands. It is therefore a 
matter for regret that the development of the vegetation of the 
island of Sebesy should not formerly have been paid attention to. 
The island of Sebesy is only 21 K.M. distant from Krakatau, 
that is measured along a Jine connecting the tops of the moun- 
1) K. W. DAMMerMAN, The Fauna of Krakatau, Verlaten Island and Sebesy. Treubia. 
Vol. i, 1922, p. 64. 
