closes so firmly as to prevent any evaporation from takfag
place. The water, being gradually absorbed through the-
handle into the footstalk, gives vigour to the leaf and sustenance
to the plant. As soon as the pitchers are exhausted,
the lids again open to admit whatever moisture may fall;
and when the plant has produced its seed, and the dry season
fairly sets in, it withers, with all the covers of the pitchers
standing open. Why the name of Homer’s grief-dispelling
plant should have been transferred to the pitcher plant I am
unable to explain ; but it does not appear to be possessed of
any sedative or narcotic quality like
1 \ that Nepenthes which .the wife of Thone
“ In Egypt gave to Jove born Helena.”
Many of the products of Java are not less valuable in a
commercial point of view, than those which I have enumerated
are useful to the natives, curious to the traveller, or
ornamental to the face of the country. Of such may be mentioned,
among the most important, sugar, coffee, cocoa,
spices, sago, cotton, and indigo. The Catjang is cultivated
by the Chinese for the sake of the oil' expressed from the
seed, which is not only used abundantly among themselves
and by other natives, but is also exported to China. Several
hundred acres, at no great distance from Batavia, are annually
covered with this plant, which appears to be a species
of Dolichos, of low growth and very prolific in long pods
which rest upon, and even grow into, the earth. The Caja-
putta oil, expressed from the Melaleuca Leticadendrum, is
greatly esteemed as a specific for removing rheumatic complaints,
both in the eastern and the western world. The
Nardus or spikenard, sandalwood, and Calambac or aloes
wood,-are products of Java, and form a part of the trade
with China. The Cassia Fistula, with its long pendent seed
pods filled with a medullary substance in which the beans are
èmbedded, was once considered as one of the most approved
laxatives, and great quantities of it were sent to Europe, but
modern practitioners have expelled this drug, among a whole
host of former remedies,, from the pages of the Pharmacopoeia.
The roots of the Caladi Ayer or Water Caladi (the Arum Es-
culentum) furnish, when boiled, an article of food ; and the
broad leaves^ as a topical application, are considered to be
efficacious in dispelling the pains of the gout. The Calamus
Rotang is a very useful creeper, and is worked into chair
bottoms, mats, and sofas.
After the notoriety which the baneful : Upas has obtained
from the republication, in a popular work, of a most extraordinary
account of this poisonous tree that first appeared several
years ago in the Gentleman’s Magazine, it would have been
an unpardonable neglect in us not to make very particular inquiry
into the degree of credibility which is attached by the
inhabitants of the island to its existence ; and, if such tree
did exist, to èndeavour to learn how far its deleterious qualities
might correspond with those which had been ascribed to
it. Accordingly we seldom entered a garden or plantation
without interrogating the people employed in them as to the
Upas. . The result of our inquiries was little favourable to the
truth of Foersch’s relation, which carries with it, indeed, internal
marks of absurdity. I t required some ingenuity to conceive
the existence of a single tree, the sole individual of its