112 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



germinating. Though 60,000 plants were successfully raised 

 from it by the late Mr. M'Tvor, I only receiyed the £50. 

 ; " The seed taken by the Netherlands Government cost it 

 barely £50. 



" Such then is the ' story ' attaching to the now famous 

 Cinchona Ledgeriana, the source of untold wealth to Java, 

 Ceylon, and, I hope, to India and elsewhere. I am proud 

 to see my ' dream ' of close on forty years ago is realised ; 

 Europe is no longer dependent on Peru or Bolivia for its 

 supply of life-giving quinine." 



In my new locality I experienced, as at Kosala, the same 

 difiSculty in obtaining herbarium specimens of the great trees, 

 with a better opportunity of verifying the fact that the bulk 

 of those that had been felled were really barren. The fallen 

 trunks, however, afforded an abundant harvest of ferns ; while 

 on the surrounding mountains, several of them quiescent 

 volcanoes, which were higher than any I had yet visited, I 

 was happy in gathering many shrubs and plants which I had 

 not before seen. Close to my door grew one, our common rib- 

 grass (Plantago major), which I would have passed by at home 

 as a rank w^ed, but I gathered it here with real affection, as 

 much " for auld acqua'ntance sake," as in sympathy with its 

 distant exile and inexorable durance, with a few compatriots, 

 on these unquiet peaks, which the hot surrounding plains 

 have made an island-in-an-island prison, more hopeless to 

 escape from than the most ocean-compassed speck. At 4500 

 feet above the sea I found a small species of Hypericum on 

 wet ground, like our own Marsh St. John's-wort (H. elodes) ; 

 here and there, about 5000 feet, appeared purple violets 

 (F. alata), increasing in abundance with the ascent through 

 woods of magnolias and chestnuts, their stems clothed with 

 orchids, Freycinetias, climbing aroids and lycopods, and on 

 whose floor the dreaded Upas dropped its fruits. 



Beneath the shady canopy of this tall fig no native will, if 

 he knows it, dare to rest, nor will he pass between its stem and 

 the wind, so strong is his belief in its evil influence. 



In the centre of a tea estate not far off from my encampment 

 stood, because no one could be found daring enough to cut it 

 down, an immense specimen, which had long been a nuisance to 

 the proprietor on account of the lightning every now and then 



