AFRO-INDIAN REGIONS. 



255 



pearance in the upper part of this district, and became abundant. 

 A few other plants were intermingled : as the Bodoncea, restricted in 

 some measure to certain localities; Daphne foetida, also local; a Lyco- 

 podium, in the beds of fern; and two plants with which we had 

 become familiar on coral-islands, Eupliorhia ramosissima and the 

 Oassyta. — In ascending above the elevation of a thousand feet, the 

 Gleichenia growing taller more exclusively took possession of the soil, 

 and at length became entangled and difficult to penetrate : while in 

 exposed situations, some shrubs began to show themselves, which 

 though nowhere abundant, yet deserve mention : as a Myraiiie that 

 might be mistaken for a Myrica ; the Vacciniuin cereum ; and the 

 ^Cyathodes, belonging to the Epacris tribe. 



In the valleys, and their expansions at and along the sea-coast, the 

 original forest is chiefly extinct, having long been removed for the 

 purposes of cultivation. The submaritime Paritium tiViaceum, how- 

 •ever, maintains its ground, in tracts, that at the bottom of low valleys 

 extend some distance inland ; the component trees, thirty feet high 

 with the trunk two feet in diameter, sending down long branches that 

 geniculate on reaching the ground, or taking root, give rise to new 

 trunks; while other exposed trunk-like roots send up trees at regular 

 intervals ; in short, the whole tract of interlaced trunks and branches 

 forming a sort of tree-thicket; which, however, offers no very serious 

 impediment to the traveller. — Of large forest-trees growing in the 

 valleys near the coast, the Inocarpus may have been once the most 

 frequent ; the Calopkyllum and Barringtonia being intermingled, both 

 of them large and magnificent trees. Among the trees of medium 

 and inferior size, a Ficus, having something of the aspect of Inocarpus, 

 was observed to be frequent ; the Oloclddion or tree-Phyllanthus, 

 growing chiefly in open situations, and sometimes thirty feet high, 

 with spreading pendent branches. 



From the trunks and branches of large trees, epidendric ferns, as 

 BavaUia, Niphoholus, and others, were conspicuously prominent; and 

 even epidendric Orcliidacece, were by no means rare. But the most 

 remarkable plant I met with in this lower portion of Taheiti, was a 

 Convolvidus ; a stout woody vine, tangled and twisted, and rising 

 around the outer branches of trees after the manner of ship-rigging, 

 to mantle the tallest summits with foliage and flowers. The most 

 frequent shrubs were Coluhriaa Asiatica, and Chiococca harhata ; both 

 of them six to eight feet high, and observed to withstand the deepest 

 shade of the forest. 



