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after the grassy levels and therefore at slight elevations above 
the sea. Every time the end of a ravine was reached, where- 
upon we were compelled to scramble up obliquely against the 
crumbling wall to strike another gorge reaching a little higher 
upwards. At eleven clock we were still in the forest, but a 
change in its composition was already perceptible. Though the 
same trees still occurred as we had come across lower down, 
some species became more prevalent, like Vi//ebrunnea rubes- 
cens Bl., Ficus ribes L., which also on Java belong more pro- 
perly to the mountainous regions; the most remarkable thing 
being that as we rose higher there was a plant that consti- 
tuted nearly the whole forest, this was Cyrtandra sulcata Bl. 
Now Cyrtandra is a genus of plants which in Jaya is mostly 
represented by shrubby or herbaceous plants, which occur ex- 
clusively in very moist places as underbrush beneath the higher 
forest trees. Here the plants stood side by side in thousands, 
each consisting of a number of strong branches proceeding from 
a common centre and rising up to 9 or 13 feet. Among this 
vegetation of Cyrtandra on which a host of epiphytes had 
fastened, there grew typical mountain-trees a.o. Ficus ribes L. 
We had then already reached an altitude of approximately 
1900 ft. The whole forest began to wear a moister aspect; from 
the branches depended heavy festoons of a kind of seale-moss 
that were full of water. At last we reached a point that was 
also visible from aboard the ship. Over the monotonous vege- 
tation that seems to cover all the upper half of the mountain, 
and which as we saw before, is composed chiefly of Cyrtandra 
sulcata Bl., rises a dome-shaped mass. This proved to be a 
huge banyan-tree (Ficus retusa L.) which with its thousands of 
aerial shoots covered a large area, its crown being super im- 
posed, so to say, on a forest of Cyrtandra. The degree of humi- 
dity was ever on the increase, the ground getting wetter and 
more slippery, but between the ravines there were some drier 
slopes with ridges sometimes no more than two feet wide and 
- occasionally interrupted by srooves. All consisted of granular 
_ matter sliding away underfuot, and was held together only by 
certain grasses (Saccharum spontaneum L., Imperata erundanaced Jeae 
