JACK'S LETTEES TO WALLICH, 1819-1821. 221 



On board the Xatal Choonean off Padang, 



11th October, 1820. 

 My dear Wallich, 



When I last wrote von I little thought to be so soon on the 

 move : but so it is. Sir S. and I had some conversation one morn- 

 ing at breakfast about Pulo Mas 255 which ended in his proposing 

 to me to go there on a special mission, and so in two days there- 

 after, I put myself on board a native vessel for Xatal the point 

 of appui for Nias, and am thus far on my way. Of the objects &c. 

 •of this trip I shall hereafter write more fully. I only sit down 

 at present to be prepared for any chance opportunity that may 

 occur to give you a few of my botanical discoveries that may be in 

 time for Boxburgh's second vol. It is more than doubtful whether 

 I shall be able to send this before my return to Beneoolen, so it 

 would be idle to say much on other subjects. For the last few 

 days I have been bothered with calms, but (to speak in that case 

 like an Irishman) "its an ill wind that blows nobody good," so 

 instead of fretting for a wind that would not come, I ordered out 

 the boat, and proceeded to ransack the hundred beautiful little 

 islands that stud this part of the Sumatran coast. Pulo Kumbang, 

 Pulo Bintangor, Pulo Pegang, Pulo Shytan ! &c. &c. have thus been 

 explored, and their plants rescued from oblivion. You can hardly 

 imagine anything more beautiful than these little islands, rising in 

 little hills out of the blue waters, and covered either with forests, 

 or planted with cocoanut trees. The access to them is not how- 

 ever always easy, their shores being generally guarded by coral reefs, 

 on which the heavy surf is always beating, — a good roll in which is 

 often the price of landing. 



I am now up with you in Didymocarpi, having found my fifth 

 in one of these excursions, a didynamous species, which I mean to 

 call D. elongata, from having the lower lip of the corolla and its 

 tube unusually elongated, also long secund spikes. 200 



I found also fresh specimens of what in my last despatches I 

 called Hypsagyne, and on referring to Eoxb. (which I had not 

 with me when I first found it at Tappanooly) find that it is neither 

 more nor less than his Johnia, but a new species, — Sumatrana (si 

 velis, mini).- 57 With all due deference, I think it is a great pity 

 Roxburgh discovered it first, for I like my own name best. I 

 found at the same time a Hippocratea, which agrees with Eoxb. 

 H. obfusifolia in having -1-seeded capsules, but has serrated leaves, 

 ergo I think new. 238 Have you not often remarked what singular 



255. A large island off the west coast of Sumatra. 



256. Didymocarpus elongata, Jack in the Transactions of the Linnean 

 Society of London, xiv. (1825) p. 37. = Didissandra elongata, C. B. Clarke. 



257. Salacia sp. Jack in the Malayan Miscellanies, ii. (1822) No. 7, 

 p. 92, reduced Johnia to Salacia, and remarked that he had found two 

 species in Sumatra, but he did not give them names. 



258. This Hippocratea was not described. 



R. A. Soc. No. 73, 1916. 



