203 



so that he can hardly be said to have been on the spot at the 

 time of the eruption. The Dutch text cites as yet another witness 

 of the total destruction in 1883 the zoologist S 1 u i t e r. In 1888 and 

 1889, 5 and 6 years after the eruption, this savant investigated the 

 coral reefs 1 ) of Krakatao but had, as he himself stated " 2 ), no time 

 to investigate the new terrestrial fauna. It does not appear that he 

 ever has ascended the mountain or instituted any investigations after 

 the new flora, nor has he, to my knowledge, published anything 

 about it. Therefore it is inconceivable that his testimony has been 

 invoked. For newly discovered facts of a serious nature I refer to 

 the preceding chapter, p. 1 97, where mention is made of the discov- 

 ery of unburnt treetrunks and other parts of plants beneath the 

 layer of ashes and pumice. 



2. I he loose materials accumulated by the eruption has already '') been washed 

 away here and there and especially in the ravines and gorges the original rock 

 has come to the surface again and in those parts one can indeed find charred 

 and rotted tree-boles, but everything else came into existence after 1883. 



This communication does not possess the full charm of novelty, 

 its essential points having already been published 35 years before by 

 V e r b e e k *), who two months after the eruption found the original soil 

 to lie bare in the eroded ravines and who also mentions the presence 

 of fallen and carbonized treetrunks. As to the statement that every- 

 thing else (by which, apparently, only the vegetation and the fauna 

 are meant) came into existence after 1883, I refer to Chapter 111. 

 herebefore. 



3. The development of the new flora has not received all the attention it deserved 

 at the hands of naturalists. I r e u b visited the island in 1886. We lack inform- 

 ation as to the first beginnings of the new flora but still the results of 

 T r e u b's visit are very important. In 1897 Freub, accompanied by P e n ; i g 

 and some other naturalists, came to Krakatao a second time. I he flora was 

 then already comparatively rich- About what happened in the interval of years 

 between those two visits one cannot do more than form a general notion. In 1906 

 the island was visited by Ernst and his companions, in 1908 by an 

 expedition of the Topographical Survey Service, who had been joined by 

 the first zoologist (acobson and the botanist Backer. In 1919 Docters 

 v a n Leeuwen came together with the zoologists B a r t e I s and S u n i e r. 

 It was only on the last of all these expeditions that the summit was reached 

 by a scientific :i ) investigator so that our knowledge of the part of the 



') C. Ph. Sluiter, Einiges iiber die Entstehung der Korallenriffe in der lavasee 

 und iiber neue Korallenbildung bei Krakatau [Nat. Fiidschr. Ned. Indie XLIX (1890) 

 p. 360 seq.|. 



-') Nat. Tijdschr. Ned. Indie XLVIII (1889) p. 353. 



3 ) Italics by me. B. 



4 ) Verbeek, Kort Verslag (1884) p. 13; Krakatao (1888), pp. 122, 475, 



