IN BORNEAN FORESTS [chap. 



called " Dammar-daghin," i.e. " Flesh-resin," on account of its 

 colour, and is one of the best commercial kinds. 1 



Amongst other plants of great interest to the botanist, I found 

 on the higher parts of the mountain a new type of vegetable parasite, 

 or perhaps a saprophyte, 2 which I afterwards described and named 

 Petrosavia stellaris, in honour of my former master, Professor Pietro 

 Savi, of the University of Pisa. 



Very little animal life was to be seen in the forest on Mount 

 Poe, and I did not get a single mammal or bird. Even butterflies 

 and other insects were very scarce. 



We passed the night comfortably enough in the grotto or rock 

 shelter. At dawn, on August 16th, the thermometer stood at 64 

 Fahr. , and the barometer at 667 74 mm. With these data I calculated 

 the elevation of this spot to be 4,238 ft. above sea-level. Taking 

 a few Dyaks as guides with me, I started at once, accompanied 

 also by my Malays. No pathway existed, but it was easy to find the 

 way/to the summit by following the ridge on which we were. The 

 slope was not at all steep, and the forest, always beautiful, was easy 

 to traverse. As we proceeded the trees diminished in height and 

 got more and more covered with mosses. We reached the summit 

 without trouble, where one of the first objects which caught my 

 eye was a new conifer (Dacrydium Beccarii, Pari.), a small but very 

 elegant tree, with the aspect of an Araucaria ; its branches bent 

 upwards and forming a large umbrella-shaped crown. This was 

 the sixth conifer which I found on Gunong Poe's heights ; a remark- 

 able fact, which I think cannot be wholly accounted for by the 

 facility with which the seeds of such plants are dispersed. It is 

 more likely that on the top of Mount Poe we have the remains of a 

 very ancient flora, which, once owning widely-diffused types, has 

 transmitted a few to the present epoch in such localities as have 

 been least affected by telluric disturbances, which in remote times 

 have certainly wrought vast changes in the configuration of the 

 vTndian and Polynesian Archipelagoes. 



The summit of Poe is nearly always wrapped in dense mist, and 

 the all-pervading dampness has caused a thick carpet of sphagnum 

 to cover the ground, and a coating of other mosses, especially 



1 In the forest on the plain near Kuching I found another Dammara 

 (Agathis Bomeensis, Warb.), which produces no resin. Both, however, 

 appear to me to be mere varieties of Dammara alba. 



2 It is very difficult, amidst the dense masses of intertwined roots which 

 struggle for mastery in the arena of a tropical forest, to isolate such small 

 plants with the necessary precautions, and to ascertain beyond doubt that 

 they really are saprophytes, viz., independent and living on elements taken 

 from the humus, and not parasites, and adherent to some root of another 

 species. It is still more difficult to discover whether such organisms have 

 not had a primitive parasitical stage, becoming later independent or sapro- 

 phytic. 



100 



