The Productions Of
The Aru Islands Offer The Strangest Evidence, That At No Very
Distant Epoch They Formed A Part
Of New Guinea; and the peculiar
physical features which I have described, indicate that they must
have stood at very
Nearly the same level then as they do now,
having been separated by the subsidence of the great plain which
formerly connected them with it.
Persons who have formed the usual ideas of the vegetation of the
tropics who picture to themselves the abundance and brilliancy of
the flowers, and the magnificent appearance of hundreds of forest
trees covered with masses of coloured blossoms, will be surprised
to hear, that though vegetation in Aru is highly luxuriant and
varied, and would afford abundance of fine and curious plants to
adorn our hothouses, yet bright and showy flowers are, as a
general rule, altogether absent, or so very scarce as to produce
no effect whatever on the general scenery. To give particulars: I
have visited five distinct localities in the islands, I have
wandered daily in the forests, and have passed along upwards of a
hundred miles of coast and river during a period of six months,
much of it very fine weather, and till just as I was about to
leave, I never saw a single plant of striking brilliancy or
beauty, hardly a shrub equal to a hawthorn, or a climber equal to
a honeysuckle! It cannot be said that the flowering season had
not arrived, for I saw many herbs, shrubs, and forest trees in
flower, but all had blossoms of a green or greenish-white tint,
not superior to our lime-trees.
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