Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
leafed palm, whose small, nearly entire leaves are used to make the dammar torches, and to
form the water-buckets in universal use. During this walk I saw near a dozen species of
palms, as well as two or three Pandani different from those of Langundi. There were also
some very fine climbing ferns and true wild Plantains (Musa), bearing an edible fruit not so
large as one's thumb, and consisting of a mass of seeds just covered with pulp and skin. The
people assured me they had tried the experiment of sowing and cultivating this species, but
could not improve it. They probably did not grow it in sufficient quantity, and did not per-
severe sufficiently long.
Batchian is an island that would perhaps repay the researches of a botanist better than any
other in the whole Archipelago. It contains a great variety of surface and of soil, abundance
of large and small streams, many of which are navigable for some distance, and there being
no savage inhabitants, every part of it can be visited with perfect safety. It possesses gold,
copper, and coal, hot springs and geysers, sedimentary and volcanic rocks and coralline
limestone, alluvial plains, abrupt hills and lofty mountains, a moist climate, and a grand and
luxuriant forest vegetation.
The few days I stayed here produced me several new insects, but scarcely any birds. But-
terflies and birds are in fact remarkably scarce in these forests. One may walk a whole day
and not see more than two or three species of either. In everything but beetles, these eastern
islands are very deficient compared with the western (Java, Borneo, &c.), and much more so
if compared with the forests of South America, where twenty or thirty species of butterflies
may be caught every day, and on very good days a hundred, a number we can hardly reach
here in months of unremitting search. In birds there is the same difference. In most parts of
tropical America we may always find some species of woodpecker tanager, bushshrike,
chatterer, trogon, toucan, cuckoo, and tyrant-flycatcher; and a few days' active search will
produce more variety than can be here met with in as many months. Yet, along with this
poverty of individuals and of species, there are in almost every class and order, some one or
two species of such extreme beauty or singularity, as to vie with, or even surpass, anything
that even South America can produce.
One afternoon when I was arranging my insects, and surrounded by a crowd of wonder-
ing spectators, I showed one of them how to look at a small insect with a hand-lens, which
caused such evident wonder that all the rest wanted to see it too. I therefore fixed the glass
firmly to a piece of soft wood at the proper focus, and put under it a little spiny beetle of the
genus Hispa, and then passed it round for examination. The excitement was immense. Some
declared it was a yard long; others were frightened, and instantly dropped it, and all were as
much astonished, and made as much shouting and gesticulation, as children at a pantomime,
Search WWH ::




Custom Search