46 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE OENITHOLOGY OF INDIA. 



" The high forest. — This is chiefly composed of large trees with 

 rich foliage. Several valuable timber trees, and others, useful on 

 account of their fruits, are here mentioned. 



" The finest high forest I saw on the southern coast of Car 

 Nicobar. 



" The Pandanus forest, in which this remarkable tree suppresses 

 all other vegetation, except a few Areca and Rotang- palms, occurs 

 only on the swampy fresh-water alluvium along the course of 

 rivers and streams, especially near the sea where the rivers form 

 more or less permanent basins. Here it is Pandanus mellori, the 

 largest kind of Pandanus which forms the forests. I believe that 

 what we saw of the Pandanus forest on Pulo Milu was one of the 

 most peculiar pictures of tropical vegetation seen during the whole 

 of our journey. 



" The Pandanus is not cultivated on the Nicobars ; it is most 

 flourishing in a wild state, and is, after the cocoa-palm, the most 

 important plant for the natives as regards food : it is the truly 

 characteristic plant of the Nicobar Islands. 



" Grassy plains. — If one has succeeded in marching from the 

 flat coral laud through the high and Pandanus forests, he generally 

 reaches the foot of hills, rising on the larger southern islands, 

 Great and Little Nicobar, to a height of 1,000 to 2,000 feet above 

 the sea, but on the northern islands they are not above 500 to 600 

 feet. This hilly laud certainly occupies ^ to i of the whole 

 area. It is composed of rocks of the gabbro and serpentine for- 

 mation, and of the clayey and sandy tertiary beds formerly noticed. 

 The eruptive rocks are comparatively of small extent. Where 

 felspathic gabbro forms the ground, this, being produced by the 

 decomposition of the rocks, may be said to be fertile ; it is covered 

 with thick forest, but even the Serpentine Island Tillangchong has 

 a flourishing primeval forest. On the other hand, a remarkable 

 difference is perceptible in the vegetation of the tertiary ground. 



" The hills of the northern islands are to a great extent only 

 covered with grass ; those of the southern, however, chiefly with a 

 thick forest vegetation. This distinction rests upon an essential 

 difference in the composition of the ground. The hills of the nor- 

 thern islands consists of a sterile argillaceous soil ; those of the 

 southern islands, on the contrary, of a fertile calcareous, sandy- 

 argillaceous soil. 



"Where the most favorable tropical climate could produce 

 nothing else but stiff and dry lalang-grass (Imperata), and rough 

 Cyperaceae (Scleria, Cyperus, Diplacrum), surely there nature has 

 clearly enough left the stamp of sterility; yet just between such 

 grassy hills, which from a distance look so homely, resembling fields 

 of corn, have the colonists on the Naneowry channel established 

 their houses and gardens. The grass grows now high enougn 

 above their burial grounds ; the breakers play with the bricks with 



