390 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
with the marks, ring forming within ring, the patterns 
thus made giving at a little distance the effect of 
tattooing. In some villages quite half the population 
are affected. The exanthemata are at present unknown. 
6. Flora and Fauna. 
The soil in New Guinea is almost everywhere exceed¬ 
ingly fertile, and the country covered with dense virgin 
forests, although in a few localities, especially on the 
south coast—of which Port Moresby is one—we find tree¬ 
less tracts of barren soil. In German New Guinea are 
stretches of park-like country not unlike those met with 
in the neighbourhood of Kina Balu in North Borneo. 
Though small tracts occur here and there, no large areas 
of the worthless lalang grass, such as those in Java and 
Sumatra, are known. In the forests the trees, which are 
perhaps on the whole less lofty than those of Bornean 
and Celebesian forests, are covered and matted together 
with creepers and rattans, the dense foliage shutting out 
the sun’s rays, and causing in most places a lack of the 
smaller herbaceous plants. It is probable that the total 
number of vascular plants existing in the island is not 
far short of 4000 species. Omitting the vegetation of 
the littoral, which lias a considerable similarity through¬ 
out the Malay Archipelago, and that of high altitudes, to 
which special reference is necessary, and taking that only 
of the intervening region for consideration, we find it to 
be eminently Malayan in character, though perhaps more 
so generically than specifically. Yet that a strong 
Australian element is also present is shown by certain 
species of Drosera, Eucalyptus , Grevillea , Clerodendron , 
Leptospermum , and phyllode-bearing Acacias; and, in the 
mountains, of Epilobium , Galium, Myosotis , Gaidtiera, 
