Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/370

338 furnished with a library and a large room for work. A dining room and a few bedrooms are provided, for there is no hotel. The garden of forestry, situated about halfway up the old volcano of Gedé, is planted chiefly with Australian and Japanese trees and shrubs. Of these, perhaps the most remarkable are the curious specimens of the Australian Xantoroa actinis in front of the mountain pavilion. The forest of Tjibodas, in which the garden is placed, is a remarkable one. Paths have been traced which lead by numerous windings to interesting spots, up to the height of about two thousand metres. Outside of these paths one could not go three steps on account of the impenetrable thickness of the woods. The ground is carpeted with a world of mosses and finely



cut ferns, of the most surprising and various forms. In the trees of from one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet high are masses of orchids, ferns, and lianas to make one dream, away up to the topmost branches. The lianas in some places form complete stalagmites of verdure, so thickly covered are their supple stems with mosses and broad-leaved parasites. They form an inextricable but transparent network, through which the rays of the sun pass to lighten up the minutest details of these rare beauty spots.

The vegetation varies constantly as we ascend the slope of the Gedé, and seems to grow more and more interesting.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La Nature.