182 JAVA. [chap. vn. 



On ascending the mountain, we first meet with tem- 

 perate forms of herbaceous plants, so low as 3,000 feet, 

 where strawberries and violets begin to grow, but the 

 former are tasteless, and the latter have very small and 

 pale flowers. Weedy Composite also begin to give a 

 European aspect to the wayside herbage. It is between 

 2,000 and 5,000 feet that the forests and ravines exhibit 

 the utmost development of tropical luxuriance and beauty. 

 The abundance of noble Tree-ferns, sometimes fifty feet 

 high, contributes greatly to the general effect, since of all 

 the forms of tropical vegetation they are certainly the most 

 striking and beautiful. Some of the deep ravines which 

 have been cleared of large timber are full of them from 

 top to bottom ; and where the road crosses one of these 

 valleys, the view of their feathery crowns, in varied 

 positions above and below the eye, offers a spectacle of 

 picturesque beauty never to be forgotten. The splendid 

 foliage of the broad-leaved Musaceas and Zingiberacese, 

 with their curious and brilliant flowers ; and the elegant and 

 varied forms of plants allied to Begonia and Melastoma, 

 continually attract the attention in this region. Fining 

 up the spaces between the trees and larger plants, on 

 every trunk and stump and branch, are hosts of Orchids, 

 Ferns and Lycopods, which wave and hang and inter- 

 twine in ever-varying complexity. At about 5,000 feet 

 I first saw horsetails (Equisetum), very like our own 



