Additions to the Flora of Borneo and Other Malay Islands: XIX

Kew Bulletin ◽  
1946 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 31 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. N. Ridley
Keyword(s):  

In concluding this discussion, I must say how very greatly we are indebted to the geologists who have not only described the basic geology of North Borneo in terms which we biologists can understand, but have risen to the occasion to meet and help our botanical problem of an old sub-alpine and montane flora on a very new mountain. Professor van Steenis’s learned account of this flora is based on a prodigious quantity of information, from which he extracted merely a few examples to illustrate each point. Every one could have been supported by so many other examples that the botanist is compelled to agree in general with his conclusions. Both the botanical and geological conclusions point to the necessity of investigating much more fully in biological, geological, and pedological aspects the older interior mountains of Borneo. This will be a matter for co-operation with the Indonesian scientists. The first Royal Society Expedition left, Mr President, on Kinabalu an aluminium portable hut which has been named ‘Burlington House’. It has been transported by the Forest Department of Sabah from our first base-camp site on the east ridge of the mountain to the second base-camp site for our next expedition to the Pinosuk Plateau in 1964, and here I hope it will remain a base for continual and prolonged ecological studies of the mountain’s problems, if not for further expeditions sponsored by the Society. Mr Askew and I, who are going on this second expedition, have profited very greatly from this discussion. I, personally, have gathered also considerable support for my durian theory, which relates more to the lowland flora of Borneo, the centre of durians—and the mace which lies in front of us is really a distant symbol of durianism. I wish to thank the contributors for having made this discussion so successful, and you, Mr President, for having allowed us to hold it.


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