222 
FORESTS OF JAVA. 
monkeys of many kinds, wild cats, deer, civets, and otters, and numerous 
varieties of squirrels are constantly met with. In the latter none of 
these occur : tlie prehensile-tailed cuscus being almost the only terres- 
trial mammal, except wild pigs, which is found in all the islands, and 
deer (probably of recent introduction) in Celebes and the Moluccas. 
The birds most numerous in the western islands are woodpeckers, 
barbets, trogons, fruit-thrushes, and leaf-thrushes, which form the great 
ornithological features of the country. These, in the eastern islands, 
are unknown ; so that the naturalist seems to have passed into a new 
world, and can hardly understand that so great a change has been 
effected in a few days, and without ever losing sight of land. 
FORESTS OF JAVA. 
The forests of Java remind the traveller in many respects of those 
of Brazil, though the trees of which they are composed are not the 
same. But there is the same exuberance of vegetation : huge tall 
trunks, the upper branches of which interlace so as to form an almost 
impervious roof; and epiphytes and parasitical plants clinging together 
and to the trees in a network of leaf and flower. The ferns, moreover, 
are equally abundant, and of the most various and beautiful species. 
Some of them attain to arboreal proportions, and are of the most 
exquisite outlines imaginable. The low grounds teem with aroids, 
amaranths, papilionaceous or leguminous plants, and poisonous 
euphorbias. The papaw, a native of the West Indies, thrives almost 
everywhere; the banana, with its long, green, drooping leaves, and 
green or golden-yellow fruit ; the fragrant-flowered screw-pine ; and 
the tall and shapely cocoa-nut palm, with its feathery crown, and its 
rich clusters of wholesome fruit. Fruit ! Where but to Java, and the 
genial islands of the East, would you go for fruits of the rarest quality, 
such as Adam might have offered to Eve for her marriage-feast, — more 
delicious than even the lucent syrups and candied sweets which 
Porphyro, in Keats's strangely beautiful poem, makes ready for his 
lady-love ! There is the mangostin, with its rich yet delicate and 
wholly indescribable flavour; the rambutan, of globular form and 
slightly acid taste ; the mango, soft, pulpy, and aromatic ; the duku. 
