2-18 



(see p. 130, footnote 2). From a trunk washed ashore but not yet 

 dead ') such a shoot may quite well have developed and of course 

 have grown in an upward direction. The mother-trunk may afterwards 

 have died and rotted away. In the same brushwood the coco-palms 

 were found, of the apparent age of which nothing is said but that 

 they were young. They cannot have been the same as those seen 

 by me 1 1 years before, for the latter were growing some hundreds 

 of meters to the north-west. If these had survived they would have 

 been in 1919 rather tall and could have borne flowers and fruits, 

 they would have been very conspicuous and probably have been 

 observed. As not any mention is made of them, it is next to certain 

 that they have disappeared in the intervening years. Why the plants 

 forming the ,,meagre vegetation of the cliffs" are not recorded is not 

 clear. In short, the description of the vegetation at Zwarte Hoek given 

 by Mr. DoctersvanLeeuwen is altogether unsatisfactory. It 

 appears that his aim was not to study seriously the development of 

 the vegetation but only to hastily collect as many species as possible. 



^ 8. Mr. Docters van Leeuwen states that liis investigation was only a 

 provisional one and that he shall have to return several times, when not only 

 the species of the flora and fauna have to be collected as completely as 

 possible but also a picture must be formed of the phenomena that concurred 

 in reestablishing life in these islands. 



I am of opinion that, as first of all it has not been proven that 

 the original vegetation was totally destroyed by the eruption of 1883 

 and secondly the results of all investigations were strongly biassed 

 by their very serious shortcomings, we know at present next to 

 nothing about the nioilc of development of the new flora. And we 

 shall /ICVCT know, if the investigations continue to be carried out in 

 the very unscientific way followed up till now. Collecting some 

 plants and vaguely speculating on them should, in the absence of 

 all serious investigations, not be considered as identical with trying 

 to solve difficult oecological problems. The sooner there comes an 

 end to this childish delusion, the better it is. The money misspent 

 on costly botanical excursions and publications of this kind could 

 be used much better. 



?t 9. It is a not unusual phenomenon that somewhere in the ocean a new island 

 arises. I his is mostly formed by the action of coral-polyps. Coral-islands are 

 generally small, flat, level islands, which, with the thin layer of sand cast on 

 them by the sea, do not possess enough of fertile soil for forest-plants. The 



1 ) One should bear in mind that the transport of objects by sea-currents from 

 lava to Krakatao can be made within a single day. 



