his way, such as gutta or indiarubber, camphor, dammar,
or forest fruits for food or medicine.
This is in the forest primaeval, but near clearings, or
on the skirts of the forest near rivers, which let in the
light and air, the phalsenopsids and other epiphytes are
less ambitious, and they may then be found in positions
but little above the more plebeian terrestrial kinds of
vegetation. This is also the case when, as sometimes
happens, they are found on the trees which fringe little
islands; and then not only do the plants receive a good
deal of sunshine as it streams through the leafy twigs of
the branches to which they cling, but it is also reflected
back again from the glistening sea. The intense light
in which they thus exist, added to the fervent heat and
the deluge of rain which falls during six or seven months
of the year, accounts for the enormous leaf and root
growth made by these plants in their native habitats.
The flowering of the plants is not so extraordinary,
indeed rather disappointing, after the results which may
be seen in English gardens. It is not so much the
paucity of flowers produced, however, as their early destruction
caused by the “ unbidden guests ” the orchids
are made to entertain.
High up overhead the most lovely orchids hold their
court in the sunshine : here they are really- “ at home ”
to their winged visitors. Now and then, however, you
come across a newly-fallen tree—a very monarch of the
woods—which has succumbed to old age and rude weather
at last, and has sunk to the earth from which it sprang
a seedling generations ago; its branches laden with
everything inanimate, which had made a home in its
branches. Some of these ruined trunks are perfect gardens
of beauty, wreathed with graceful climbing plants,
and gay with flowers and foliage. The fall of a large
tree, and its smaller dependents, lets in the sun, and so
the epiphytes do not suffer much for a time; and one
may thus observe them in all their beauty.
Here, right in the collar of the tree, is a plant of the
grammatophyllum orchid, big enough to fill a Pickford’s
van, and just now opening its golden-brown spotted
flowers on stout spikes two yards long. There, on
that topmost branch, is a mass of the moth orchid, or
phalsenopsis, bearing a hundred snowy flowers at lea st;
and in such healthy vigour is it, that lovers of orchids
at home — supposing it could be flashed direct to
“ Stevens’s ” in its present state — would outbid each
other for such a glorious prize, until the hammer would
fall at a price near on a hundred guineas, as it has
done before for exceptional specimens of these lovely
flowers.
There, gleaming in the sunlight, like a scarlet jewel,
beneath those great leathery aroid leaves, is a cluster of
tubular seschynanthus flowers; and here is another wee
orchid, a tiny pink-blossomed cirrhopetalum, whose
flowers and leaves scarcely rise above the bright carpet
of velvety moss among which it grows. But what is that
attractive gleam of gold and green swaying to and fro in
the sunshine ? A h ! that is a beauty of another kind !
And a native, to whom it is pointed out, ejaculates,
1 Chalaka ! ular Tuan ! ”—a wicked snake, s ir ; and
we are content to move on, and leave him alone in his
glory. We tramp on for an hour longer, without even
the glimpse of a flower being visible, except here and
there a few fragments on the ground, the remnant spolia
of the flower world which exists on the roof of this
grand cathedral of trees.
Half an hour further, and the increasing numbers of
ierns and selaginella mosses suggest the presence of water