02 



A NATUJtALlSrS WANDEIilNOS 



hand, forest seeds refuse to root in it. Neither tlie incessant 

 raios, nor the driest droughts of summer kill it. The fire may 

 sweep the siirfiiee l>!iro, but it fails to t^Aieh the roota, which 

 spring again in fresher vigour through the ashes. Peep shade 

 alone seeros to check itM f^rowth. The native in the hill 

 regions does not make sawahs (which are good from year to 

 year), but constantly takes in his fields by felling, where he 

 lists, in the unbroken forest Ab, after r(?aping for only two 

 seasons this new laud, (on which he scatters Ins seed Ijctween the 

 fallen trunks), he deserts it for a newer patch, broad tracts of 

 the Island are every year becoming covered with this ineradi- 

 cable exhauster of the soil, and by-iind-bye the virgin forests 

 of this country will have entirely ceased, if some sharper 

 supervision be not exercised by the Government over the 

 timljer-felling mania of the native. As Colonel Beddorae 

 remarks of the like devastation in India : ** the value of the 

 timber thus destroyed by one man, calculating it by the 

 numlx;r of logs it might have yielded, is at least twenty times 

 as great as the value of the crop of ra^i obtained in the 

 two years that cultivation is continued. The low jungle 

 which ct»nios np after desertion of J:umari land is more 

 injurious to health than lofty forest open below. Besides 

 health considerations and decrease of rain and moisture, this 

 rude system of culture [results in] the destruction of valuable 

 ^ timber .... and rendering of land untit for coffee." 



^^Tho present vegetation of the whole of this portion of the 

 island stands on an unbroken layer of volcanic mud, which tells 

 of a peritwl of almost unparalleled volcanic activity. Wherever 

 the streams have opened sections, or a road cutting has 

 been made, numbers of great trees, some of them thirty yanls 

 in length, are exposed in a completely silicified condition, and 

 often so perfectly as to have preserved to their cores the 

 structure of their tissues. Standing on some one of these bare 

 denuding slopes, I have tried to picture to myself the terrible 

 outburst in which this region must have been overwhelmed, at 

 a date which cannot geologically have been very remote ; for 

 lying prostrate in great numbers as they were, — many of them 

 having fallen across each other, — the forest of which they 

 formed a part must have l>een snddi^nly entombM benenfb an 

 avalauelif* of the pftrifying mud so deep tliut the powerfvdly 



