6 
Ridley .— The Distribution of Plants. 
Thus in Java the original flora has almost entirely disappeared over large 
areas, and in the Tosari district there is hardly an indigenous tree to be 
seen. I found here but one native tree ( Helicia obovata, Benn.), and the 
most conspicuous plants are the Radish of Europe and Datura arborea , 
Linn., of South America. The roadside banks are covered with a mixture 
of European weeds and indigenous Javanese herbs, which have been able to 
survive in these spots. 
In the less accessible southern parts of Java, I am told, the original 
forest flora persists, as well as the larger mammalia which have long 
disappeared from northern Java. There are also some good forests left on 
the bigger volcanic mountains. 
In dealing with questions of distribution and origin of floras, this 
destruction of the original vegetation must be taken into account, and it 
must be remembered that in such cases we are restricted to the investigation 
of the plants which occupy the ground at the present time, and not dealing 
with the original flora of a few centuries ago. 
The fate of a forest flora when timber-felling is started is soon decided. 
Not only do the big trees with their epiphytic flora disappear, but, 
owing to the admission of light and heat into the jungle, all herbaceous, 
shade-loving plants for a long way through the still standing forest perish. 
Over the cleared land, if not put under cultivation, grows the Lalang Grass, 
Imperata cylmdrica, Cyr., in the eastern tropics and other inflammable 
herbaceous plants elsewhere. These plants are often fired, accidentally or 
intentionally, and all the rest of the indigenous flora, herbs, and small 
shrubs, constantly burnt, soon disappear and all that remain are the few 
species of plants which can survive constant burning; such plants are those 
with subterranean rhizomes, like the Imperata , leguminous shrublets, and 
herbs whose seeds are uninjured by the passing fire, Macarangas (Euphor- 
biaceae), whose buds are protected from injury by resin, and trees like 
Cinnamomum iners , the resinous leaves of which burn with so great rapidity 
that the main buds and trunk are unharmed, as the fire passes too quickly 
by to really injure the tree. 
Where land has got into this state after a few years, either by cultiva¬ 
tion or by being cleared and overgrown with Imperata or such inflammable 
plants, it may be hundreds of years before any of the original vegetation 
comes back, and then only if big areas of original unhurt forest remain in the 
vicinity. In Province Wellesley, at Tasek Gelugur, was a flat, sandy plain 
covered with a dense growth of Imperata ; possibly, as its^ name (Tasek, 
a lake) denotes, it was originally a swampy lake district: it had not been 
cultivated within the memory of man, and natives assured me it was in 
exactly the same state fifty years previously. Besides the grass, hardly any 
plants occur except a few shrublet Leguminosae. If the country becomes 
regularly settled by a large population or is extensively cultivated, all the 
