Identifier: naturalistswande01forb (find matches)
Title: A naturalist's wanderings in the Eastern archipelago; a narrative of travel and exploration from 1878 to 1883
Year: 1885 (1880s)
Authors: Forbes, Henry O. (Henry Ogg), 1851-1932
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York, Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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etain their perfume even after they have beendropped by these birds. At the summit pitcher-plants (Nepenthes pliyllampliora)appeared in profusion, climbing up the trees and runningover the ground among the moss, out of which peeped thedelicate bright star-like flowers of the AgrGstemma montanum,which always reminded me of the pretty European ChickweedWinter-green (Trientalis europoea) of our northern woods.On one of the lower knolls I found perhaps the most in-teresting plant in my Javan collection, a species of Petr&a(P. arborea), growing entirely wild in the forest. This genus,belonging to the family of the Yerbenaceze, is almost entirelyconfined to the South American continent; and it is ofextreme interest to find it, in this inexplicable way, croppingup in a region so far removed from the centre of its distribu-tion. A species from the island of Timor occurs, withouthistory, in the collection in the British Museum made byMr Robert Brown; but these are the only two examples, so
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TBA5I8VEB8E seotion of the stem of Myrmecodia tubewsa. IN JAVA. 79 far as I am aware, hitherto collected uncultivated in theOld World. The 14th of June is to me memorable as being the dayon which for the first time I saw in its native habitat, andgathered there, that most singular of the vegetable productionsof the Indian Archipelago, the Myrmeeodia tuberom andHijchiopliytum formicarum. Their most striking characteristicwill be indelibly marked in my remembrance by the sen-sations other than mental, by which their acquaintance wasmade. In tearing down a galaxy of epiphytic orchids from anerythrina tree, I was totally overrun, during the short momen-tary contact of my hand with the bunch, with myriads of aminute species of ant (Plieidoh javana), whose every bite was asting of fire. Beating a precipitous retreat from the spot, Istripped with the haste of desperation, but, like pepper-dustover me, they were writhing and twisting their envenomedjaws in my skin, each little abdomen spitefu

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