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 persevere 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. Butterflies 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, bush shrike, 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 wondering 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,
or at a Christmas exhibition of the oxyhydrogen microscope.
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