114 



A NATUJi A LIST'S WANDElilNQS 



which flourished elegant MelastoniaSf with white instead of 

 pink flowers, and raspberries (Ritbus) of many kinds, the Buhus 

 UneuiuSf a form with specially beautiful foliage, being abun- 

 dant between GOOO and 7000 feet. On many of these moun- 

 tains a single step would often lead the foot out of the green 

 forest on to the edge of a great scar-like blotch, exuding 

 8uli)hureons vapours through every crack and orifice, dts- 

 fignring their verdant slopes, like a suppurating sore on a 

 fair neck. Yet within the indurated margins of these smoul- 

 dering cratei's, a Uma specially and surprisingly interesting is 

 to be encotintered. Amid the very vapours of the fumaroles I 

 gathered bunches of Ericaceous flowers, such as GaMteria 

 hucoearjxi and punctata, and Vaa'inium f orihuudum, tlieir 

 leaves loaded with sulphur and other deposits, but their 

 flowers stiff with healthy waxiness and fnigrant with their 

 own sweet honey odour j Dipteris Jiorsfiddi and other ferns 

 and plants, nowhere else to bo seen on the mountain, grew in 

 the steaming mud ; while Bhododeml i'oti retusum stretched its 

 roots out into the fuming streams^ which boiJed and bul>f>h'd 

 over out of the rumbling cauldrons below. 



The Dipteris fern is not found in Java much farther to thi; 

 cast. A lino through the longitude of Samarang, which ap- 

 pears to be its eastern boundary, is also the western limit of 

 the teak {Tectoim grandis), of the camphor tree (Drifohalanops 

 eampJiora)^ and of several species of palms (BornHsm jkilielli/or' 

 mis), and several species of Car^ota and other trees, which are 

 not found in West Java, though abundant in Sumatra. Mr. 

 Wallace has poiuted out how much he fomid the Ornithology 

 of the eastern to differ from that of the western portion of 

 the island; and among mauimalia, I am told by intelligent 

 natives, neither the rhinoceros nor the Badger- headed Mydaus 

 crosses this Iwundary eastward. 



Outside the rim of the craters, where the ground had begun 

 as it were to heal, broad patches of a beautiful species of lichen 

 {Cktdonia vuleanica) covered the surface, each tip of its pale 

 grey thallus crowned with a fructifying scarlet disk. This 

 is the lowly vegetation with ^vhich IS'atui'c, when a crater has 

 become extinct, first slowly hides the wounds her strife has 

 made, while scars nia<le by laniJsHps are concealed in a single 

 seasun with a liixiirijinl covering of ban amis. 



