54 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



selves, though containing many Javanese and Mahxy words, is 

 quite distinct from either. It is a coarser and rougher speech, 

 and it was some time before I managed to acquire it ; but I 

 found it to be — like broad Scotch in comparison with pure 

 English — one of great expressiveness. 



As- soon as I was able to follow their discourse with ease, 

 my daily talks with these men were a source of great pleasure 

 to me. I soon found out that in regard to every thing around 

 them, they were marvellously observant and intelligent. Not 

 one or two only, but every individual amongst them seemed 

 equally stored with natural history information. There was 

 not a single tree or plant or minute shrub, but they had a name 

 for, and could tell the full history of ; and not a note in the 

 forest but they knew from what throat it proceeded. Every 

 animal had a designation, not a mere meaningless designation, 

 but a truly binomial appellation as iixed and distinctive as in 

 pur own system, differing only in the fact that their's was in 

 their own and not in a foreign language. Often enough this 

 designation has so close a resemblance and sound to Latin, 

 that it has been accepted by Western naturalists as if it had 

 been so. One of the liveliest and most obtrusive of the squirrels 

 in Java and Sumatra is a little red-furred creature called by 

 the natives tupai, and to distinguish it from its more arboreal 

 congeners they add, from its habit of frequenting branches 

 near the ground, the word tana (for earth) ; and Tupaia tana 

 is its accepted scientific term among European naturalists. 



They have unconsciously classified the various allied groups 

 into large comprehensive genera, in a way that shows an ac- 

 curacy of observation that is astonishing from this dull- 

 looking race. In this respect they excel far and away the 

 rural population of our own country, among whom without ex- 

 aggeration scarcely one man in a hundred is able to name one 

 tree from another, or describe the colour of its flower or fruit, 

 far less to name a tree from a portion indiscriminately shown 

 him. How acute is their observation is exemplified by their 

 name for the groups of true parasitic plants of the Loranthaoeee 

 (or Misletoes), which are disseminated chiefly by being unob- 

 trusively dropped by birds in convenient clefts of trees, 

 they denominate as Tai hooroongi (" birds' excreta ") ; while to 

 epiphytic plants they give a name that has almost the signi- 



