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The hill sides, to a very considerable height, have been much 
denuded of their original timber, little control being exercised over 
the local population, which annually destroys much jungle for the 
plantations of hill rice, which, when abandoned, are overgrown with 
a worthless secondary growth of bamboo and thorny shrubs. 
The population is large, and was said by the local magistrate to 
exceed 8,000 people, who subsist by the growth of rice and fruit, large 
quantities of coconuts being exported to Bangkok, and fruit, principally 
arecanuts and mangoes, to Bandon. Many pigs are reared by the local 
population but little fishing is done and the island afford but few 
supplies to the European visitor, even bananas and fowls being scarce 
and hard to obtain. On the north coast a small lode of wolfram ore has 
of late years been worked but has not proved commercially successful. 
The coasts of the island seems to be formed of schists, gneisses and other 
metamorphic rocks, but the central core and the taller hills are granite. 
Koh Pennan,! situated to the north of Koh Samui, separated 
from it by a channel about eight miles wide carrying a maximum 
depth of nine fathoms, is considerably smaller than the latter island, 
being roughly elliptical in shape with a long diameter of about ten 
miles and a short one of about six. It rises to about the same height, 
but the surface, generally speaking, is more rugged and there is not 
nearly the same proportion of flat land, except on the south coast. 
The population is considerably smaller but a large amount of copra 
and coconuts are produced, which are shipped to Bangkok. As in 
Koh Samui, the population is almost exclusively Siamese, though 
there are a certain number of trading Chinamen from Bangkok and 
the adjacent mainland. Malay is not spoken or understood on either 
island and we had great difficulty in obtaining an interpreter who 
knew even a few words of the language. 
We collected at three localities on Koh Samui, at: 
(1). Klong Pah Yie towards the northern end of the west coast 
where we stayed from May 6th to May 13th, the surrounding 
country being mainly coconuts, rice fields, grazing ground or 
secondary jungle ; 
(2) On the headwaters of a stream rising in the centre of the island, 
in the middle of the only considerable area of virgin jungle, 
on the island, where we built a camp and collected from 
May 15th to May 17th; and 
(8) On a bay near the N.E. coast which proved singularly 
uninteresting and unhealthy and at which we only stopped 
from May 18th to May 23rd. 
On Koh Pennan we had one station only, near the S.W. corner 
of the island, where we established ourselves in a comfortable 
tin-roofed “sala” built by a pious Siamese, staying from May 24th 
to June lst when we set sail for the mainland of Bandon which we 
reached after a rather irksome journey of three days. 
1 Known also as Pungun and Pungunn. 
