430 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



dividual insect, reptile or bird, feels it would be impudence to 

 intrude his or her insignificant self on the grandeur of such a 

 scene. The vegetable kingdom is owner here; the animal 

 kingdom takes the more humble station — a never-silent chorus. 



Wallace describes this part in these words (p. 114) : — " The 

 descent from this point was very fine. A stream, deep in a 

 rocky gorge, rushed on each side of us, to one of which we 

 gradually descended, passing over many lateral gulleys and 

 along the faces of some precipices by means of native bamboo 

 bridges. Some of these were several hundred feet long and fifty 

 or sixty feet high, a single smooth bamboo four inches in 

 diameter forming the only pathway, wbile a slender handrail of 

 the same material was often so shaky that it could only be used 

 as a guide rather than a support." 



About eleven that morning we finished the last descent of 

 Mt. Sepedang and came to a broad though shallow stream of the 

 Sarawak river, up which our guide led us a short way to point 

 oat a hot spring. This came bubbling out of the sand near the 

 bank and we found it boiling hot ; there was a distinct smell of 

 sulphur. I asked the Dayaks if they used it for any medicinal 

 purpose, but they said they did not. 



"We reached the large village of Sennah about an hour or so 

 later and spent the night there. This is the starting point for 

 the ascent of Mt. Penrissen, which rises close by, forming the 

 principal source of the Sarawak river. Some big plateaux 

 between 3000 ft. and 4000 ft. high have been recommended 

 as sites for a sanatorium or bill-station; the whole distance from 

 Kuching is about forty miles, half of which is already traversed 

 by a broad metalled road. 



The late Mr. Shelford made some interesting collections on 

 the mountain in 1899, and the present writer ten years later (in 

 1909). Several forms hitherto only known from Mt. Kinabalu 

 (the great mountain in British North Borneo, six hundred miles 

 to the north-east of Penrissen) were found here. Subsequent 

 expeditions in the interior of Sarawak and Dutch Borneo have 

 shown that no doubt there is a more or less continuous moun- 

 tain fauna running right through Borneo from north to west, and 

 to a certain extent prolonged into the mountains of Sumatra and 

 the Malay Peninsula. 



