xvm] ADDITIONS TO MY COLLECTIONS 



this kind ; but it may easily happen during the bad season after 

 persistent rain, when the swollen rivers carry down to the sea 

 abundant vegetable flotsam, such as tree trunks and even entire 

 trees. From the large quantity of such detritus which I saw myself 

 at Bintulu I have no doubt of the correctness of Mr. St. John's 

 assertion, only the spot where such accumulations take place may 

 vary. Mr. St. John adds that in such places there appears to be 

 a condition of the currents which keeps these floating masses 

 together, and gives them a gyrating movement. 1 



Continuing my excursion, I walked along the beach as far as 

 Tanjong Silei, entering a bay whose north-east extremity, Tanjong 

 Kedurong, at that time marked the boundary between Rajah 

 Brooke's territory and that of the Sultan of Bruni. This bay looks 

 deep and is sheltered by hills from the north-east winds, and ought 

 thus to afford good anchorage during the " Munsim landas," as the 

 north-east monsoon is styled. From Santubong, this is the most 

 elevated part of the coast, which is continuously low, partly swampy 

 and covered by nipa and mangroves, partly sandy and dotted by 

 casuarinas, but always devoid of rocks. On my way back, I 

 diverged and followed for a while the course of a streamlet, the 

 bottom of which was covered by a singular aquatic plant, Barclay a 

 Motleyi, a Nymphacea with submerged leaves and small insignificant 

 flowers hidden under water, instead of the large conspicuous ones 

 usually admired in such plants. I had already met with Bar clay a 

 during one of my first excursions in the forest near Kuching ; but 

 there I had found it covered with a thick woolly coating — a very 

 exceptional case in a plants which always lives under water. 2 The 

 specimens I found in the Bintulu streamlet were quite glabrous. 

 Owing to this peculiarity I preserved a certain number of specimens. 

 But the most important botanical booty made on this excursion 

 consisted of three new palms, which grew together on a hillock near 

 the streamlet. Two were dwarf forms with fan-shaped leaves 

 (Licuala Bintulensis , Becc, and L. spathellifera, Becc). The third 

 (Gigliolia insignis, Becc.) was the most noteworthy one : an extremely 

 elegant palm with a slender stem about an inch and a half in dia- 

 meter, and some ten feet high, ending in a tuft of large pinnate fronds 



1 Small floating islands, often some yards in length, were on several 

 occasions sighted off this part of the Bornean coast during the cruise of the 

 yacht Marchesa in these waters. — Ed. 



2 In many botanical treatises, even in those of recent date, it is asserted 

 that aquatic plants are never hairy. Amongst floating species, however, 

 this peculiarity is seen in Pistia stratiotes and in Trapa natans ; but, amongst 

 those which are completely submerged, Barclay a Motleyi is, perhaps, the only 

 instance. To what physiological necessity hairiness in submerged plants 

 corresponds I cannot imagine ; neither can I explain why the same species 

 should be in some cases covered with hairs, and in others glabrus, though 

 in every instance submerged. 



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