1882.] 
ISLAND OF JAVA. 
315 
persons, of both sexes, attain the advanced age of seventy or 
eighty, and some complete a century and upwards. 
The soil of Java is as remarkable for its richness and its depth, 
as it is for the great abundance and almost infinite variety of its 
productions. It generally resembles the richest garden mould, 
and but little labour is required to cover it with a luxuriant crop 
of whatever the cultivator pleases. The deepest and richest 
moulds of Java are alluvial soils of the valleys, near the b^ses 
of the loftier mountains. In such spots they are found from ten to 
twenty, and sometimes to even fifty feet deep. It is scarcely ne- 
cessary to observe that mountains of great height, being colder 
than the atmosphere at the same elevation, attract the passing 
clouds, abstract from them their caloric, and so cause them to 
descend in showers.* Thus, in these equatorial regions, perennial 
streams are continually pouring down the mountains' sides, teem- 
ing with the causes of fertility, by being impregnated with the 
mountain soil, and furnishing ample means for irrigating the plains 
below; To the concurrence of these causes the Island of Java 
is indebted for its peculiar fecundity. The richest mould is of 
an ash colour, and is found, as before intimated, at the bottom of 
valleys, between lofty mountains. On the plains and gentle de- 
clivities, the soil is of a darker hue, probably containing too great 
a proportion of vegetable matter, and is of an inferior quality. 
Everywhere, the plains and mountains are covered with gigantic 
forests, fruit trees, or luxuriant herbage. ^ 
The vegetable productions of Java are too multifarious for 
even an attempt to enumerate the whole ; and we must, there- 
fore, content ourselves with mentioning a few of the most useful 
and abundant, viz :- — Rice, upland and lowland ; maize, or Indian 
corn ; wheat, beans, potatoes, coffee, sugar, pepper, indigo, cotton, 
hemp, tobacco, ginger, anise, cummin, cubebs, socha-dehcious, 
kachang-goring, or catjang, palma christi, &c. Of fruits, we will 
name the mangusteen, or mangoostan, the most fascinating to the 
eye and gratifying to the taste of all the fruits in the east, or per- 
haps the world. t The mango, which grows on a large spreading 
* See Dr. Metcalf's New Theory of Terrestrial Magnetism, pages 11, 12. 
t The rnangusteen [garcinia mangostana] is the peculiar production of the Indian 
Islands, and all attempts to propagate it elsewhere have proved unsuccessful. It has 
been of late years tried at Madras and Calcutta ; and attempts to cultivate it in 
