44 



GrUAHAM. 



them grow several other fine trees already known to us from the Carolines, 

 especially splendid and numerous specimens of the Barringtonia speciosa. To 

 our surprise this fine tree was used as fuel, and its square fruits covered the ground 

 as the mast of beeches does in Europe. Morinda citrifolia, already mentioned at 

 Ualan, is here as common as in that island, and seen isolated on the outer margins 

 of the forests (10 1). The finest and most conspicuous figure in this view is, with- 

 out doubt, an areca palm, termed "Bunga" by the natives ^ 9 and dif- 

 fering from that commonly cultivated about Manilla, not in habit but in the 

 shape of the fruits, they being spherical, not oblong like acorns. The splendid 

 plant is an ornament of most valleys of the interior, the heart of its leaves being 

 esteemed as " cabbage," but very seldom eaten on account of the rarity of the 

 plant. Amongst the plants of the foreground, on the right hand two species of 



Pandanus are conspicuous. The largest, Pandanus latifolius ^15 j^, does not 



strikingly differ from plants of the same kind in the coral islands ; here it is not 

 very rare, though less common than the already-mentioned narrow-leaved species. 



The smaller species ^13 we have seen nowhere except here ; it is always 



stemless, has a simple crown, and a pale bluish tinge.* The bushes behind this 

 figure are those of a species of Limonia, with rather resinous but aromatic fruits, 

 much sought after by the wild pigeons, — a thorn flourishing in abundance in all 

 the woods of the island, and, on account of its delicate branches, less noticed by 

 the eye than, on account of its prickles, felt by the skin. The bushes on the left 

 chiefly consist of Hibiscus populneus, thickly overrun by the same creepers 

 noticed in Ualan, amongst which a Stizolobium predominates. On the right rise 

 several thickly leaved branches of Hernandia ovigera, to all appearance shoots 

 of an old fallen trunk of a tree, which is amongst the largest forest trees of the 

 island. 



* Probably Pandanus caricosus, Eumph. -—Berthold Seemann. 



