COLLECTING EXPEDITION TO BATANG PADANG. 120 
stomach I found two eggs and the half digested remains of a 
rat. The presence of the eggs shows it to have the same habit 
of robbing the nests of other birds as its Indian congener. 
On the 8th I started at 8A. M. with MAHRASIT, HARISON 
and a Sakai along the track to the North, which I have already 
mentioned, and then struck up the spur until we reached the 
top of the ridge joining the western peak with the main hill, 
and then followed that ridge, which runs in an easterly direc- 
tion up and down hills until we came to the Batu Puteh itself, 
after which it was nearly all steady up-hill work. We had 
to cut a track the whole way through a particularly thick and 
thorny undergrowth, and it was 2 P. M. before we reached the 
extreme summit, which the aneroid made 6,700 feet above sea 
level. 
I took up my gun in the hopes of getting some new birds, 
but only saw a few of one species, one specimen of which I 
shot. It is a Wesza of a species I have not seen before. Al- 
though I was disappointed in the matter of birds, still had I 
not taken the gun we should not, on that occasion, have reach- 
ed the top of the hill, for a tiger had preceded us by a few 
hours, from the ridge right up to the very summit of the moun- 
tain, and as may be imagined, there was not any anxiety 
amongst my companions to follow up the tracks, and they 
would most certainly have refused to do so if there had been 
no fire arms amongst the party, though for that matter, as I 
had no ball cartridges, it would have been no earthly use, but 
for obvious reasons I kept this fact to myself. Only two days 
before a tiger, probably the same one, was seen by HARISON 
not 200 yards from the camp in the middle of the day. 
It seems strange to find tigers in such a place, for there 
appeared to be absolutely no game, not a single track of a pig, 
deer or any other animal having been seen by us during our 
stay on Gunong Batu Puteh. 
The forest near the top of the mountain is most curious, 
consisting of twisted, stunted, wind-blown trees covered all 
over with a dense shaggy coating of moss, the ground, rocks, 
roots and dead trees being all hidden in the same manner. 
The moss is of all tints of greens, greenish-yellow, browns, 
red-browns and pinks, and is of many kinds. Some of them 
