27 



some months had to pass before the declivities with their very 

 permeable soil had received and stored a sufficient quantity of 

 water to allow a somewhat quick revival of the sorely damaged 

 vegetation. Then, however, in the deeply eroded higher ravines young 

 forest will gradually have developed, issuing from the former woods 

 but poorer than these, all non-resistant species having been killed. 

 This forest, at first very thin, gradually became denser. As soon 

 as its components began to fructify the forest extended wherever 

 the circumstances were favorable to its growth, soonest perhaps 

 in a downward direction, as many fruits must have been carried 

 forth by rainwater flowing down along the ravines. The ridges being 

 drier and sunnier than the ravines will have been clothed only 

 much later with forest, if such has happened at all. I think that in 

 such a manner part of the new vegetation has developed. For 

 that, on the seashore at least, it developed also in another way, 

 is beyond doubt. 



Verbeek, who, from his ship, a year after the eruption, saw or 

 meant to see ') on Krakatao some grass-leaves did not search the 

 above-mentioned ravines. In the first year the young vegetation 

 of trees and shrubs could not have grown to such a size that a 

 non-botanist could observe it from afar. But three years afterwards 

 Treub-) could, from his vessel, already distinguish plants near the 

 top of the cone (which reaches up to more than 800 m.) from 

 which fact one may safely conclude that these plants were 

 neither very small nor very young. Penzig and his companions in 

 1897 examined only the lower parts of the north-western side 

 of the mountain, which they reached from the north; hence they 

 could not possibly know anything of the vegetation in the higher 

 ravines on the south- and south-eastern sides. Only as late as 23 

 years after the eruption, the first as yet very meagre data :! ) about 



J ) Verbeek told me by letter of May 7tli 1923: ,,The grass-leaves which, 

 when navigating along the southern shore in August or September 1884, I meant to see, 

 iudging from the green colour of some tufts, caused astonishment to me as everything 

 else was gray and bare. But on that occasion I did not go ashore there." 



2 ) Ann. jard. Bot., hue Serie VII (1888), p. 214. 



3 j Cf. Ernst, NeueTv^lkaninsel Kiakatau ( 1!K)7), p. 28. The following commu- 

 nication of E r n s t Haeckel ') is too vague to be of value for the study of the 

 development of the new flora : ,,Whcn passing in the afternoon of |anuary 23th 'I! MM 

 near the southern coast of Krakatao we could distinctly see not only the narrow 

 brown lavaridges (sic !) which radiated from the top of the cone in every direction 

 and pierced its green mantle, but also, on the shore, a small qrove of trees which 

 seemed to reach a height of 10 1.) m '. Anyhow, from this communication appears 

 that already in l!MJI the higher ravines were densely clothed with vegetation. 



4 ) Malayische Reisebriefe. The original not being at my disposal I have had to 

 translate from the Dutch translation (Juynboll, Hit Insulinde, |). '-M'2). 



