8 A TRIP TO GUNONG BENOM. 
we were on the top an elephant ca:ne along this track but was 
turned back by the fallen trees. It is easy to understand that 
aborigines walk for choice along the ridges and hills in order 
to avoid the dense undergrowth in the valleys but why. beasts 
whose weight is calculated in tons should voluntarily carry 
that weight up hills of really considerable steepness in not so 
obvious. Do they go along the ridge in order to avoid the 
sidelong ground of the slopes much of which would give an 
insecurer foot hold? In the present case the track seemed to 
run towards the Gunong itself nearly 2000 feet higher. On 
the lower ground we saw many tracks of sladang and elephant 
and heard elephants more than once. Animal life seemed 
scarce on the hill top. A suake—mutilated beyond recogni- 
tion before I saw it—was found, also a wood louse and a scor- 
pion. Small bees (lebah) however abounded as on all hill-clear- 
ings and crawled persistently over one’s face and hands. Flies 
to appeared very quickly and in large numbers. They were in 
colour a dark metallic blue and in size between a housefly and 
a blue-bottle. They laid masses of longish white eggs on 
blankets not actually exposed to bright sunlight. There were 
also a few white woolly-looking flies of about the same size. 
None of these insects lived apparently on the spot. They all 
seemed to appear after the clearing was begun. Whence they 
came IT cannot say. I also saw a few butterflies. 
With the aid of a supply of botanical drying paper lent by 
Mr. Ridley, the Director of the Botanical Gardens, Singapore, I 
made a large and, I think, fairly complete collection of all trees, 
shrubs and plants which were at the time in fruit or flower. 
Mr. Ridley informs me that the collection reached him in good 
order and he has made out the appended catalogue raisonné 
of it. Itisin fact as an introduction to this catalogue that these 
notes have been written. From the nature of the moss upon 
the hill I should imagine that Benom is much drier than the hill 
tops on the main range. The commonest trees were “ pagar 
anak ” bintangor, kélat, rengas manak, mempassi, membungit and 
palawan, at least those were the names of them given to me by 
the coolies. ‘The ‘‘ rengas manak ” was not I was told poisonous. 
My Chinese cook however broke out with a bad eruption on his 
nose and face probably caused by ‘‘ rengas ” sap and on the night 
Jour. Straits Branch 
