palms the ‘Nebong’ (Oncosperma filamentosum) and the
unique red-stemmed ‘Malawarin’ (which long defied
Eastern collectors who wished to introduce it to Europe)
were most beautiful. The former produces an excellent
* cabbage/ as good as seakale when well cooked, and its
old stems are generally employed as piles by the Malays,
who almost always erect ther palm-thatched * atap ’
houses over the water of river or sea.
“ Bird-life generally was dozing—the birds were enjoying
their noontide siesta in the shady trees. The handsome
Bornean pheasants, the ‘Argus,’ the ‘Fireback/ and
the * Bulwer ’ with its pure snowy tail of blackcock-like
shape, were alike unseen and unheard. Now and then
the deep rich and mellow whistle of the ‘ Mino ’ bird or
Javanese ‘Grackle’ reached us, and a whole colony of
large blue, and of pretty little greyish green, yellowwinged
pigeons—Carpophagi—were surprised on a fig
tree in fruit as the canoe shot around a sudden bend in
the stream. Of the seven or eight species of hornbills
known to inhabit these groves we saw not one—indeed
our view of the birds would have been but meagre but
for the apparition of a black darter with only its head or
neck above the water, in which attitude its resemblance
to a snake is well nigh perfect. A few kingfishers braved
the sun and flitted alongside the nipa leaves, or flew
rapidly across stream like clusters of jewels endowed with
life and motion. Scarcely a sound disturbed the quietude
and beauty of such a tropical scene, except that now and
then for no very apparent reason the boatmen made a
spurt with their paddles, any little extra exertion in this
way being often accompanied by a plaintive song in
chorus—melody in perfect keeping with a wildly natural
albeit lovely spot. At one well-remembered bend of the
glassy stream the men had been directed to stop awhile,
and a few dexterous strokes of the paddle on the part of
a handsome young Kadyan man named 1 Moumein/ who
acted as steersman, sent the canoe beneath the arching
nipa plumes to a bare spot where it was possible to land.
The wet branches of a low mossy tree were covered with
the elegant little Davallia parvula, among which grew a
cirrhopetalum only about two inches in height, and bearing
little purple flowers in semi-circular whorl-like tufts
at the apices of tiny scapes. On sandstone rocks near at
hand the handsome Dipteris Horsjieldii was abundant, its
stout rhizomes creeping over the nearly bare wet rock,
and adhering so firmly by its tiny rootlets that it was
difficult to displace.* Above one’s head grew the great
glossy green umbrella-like fronds, borne aloft on stipes
varying from two to eight feet in length. Truly a noble
fern—alas! how difficult to cultivate. At the time I
lived in the locality in which it is found in the utmost
luxuriance, I read of the plant being exhibited in London
and elsewhere, but each successive report of it unfortunately
recorded its decadence. This and the glorious
Matonia pectinata—also Bornean, although first found
together with our old friends Cypripedium barbatum,
Nepenthes sanguinea, and Rhododendron jasminiflorum, on
Mount Ophir, in Malacca—are two of the most noble of
all ferns, rivalling the palms indeed in stately beauty and
substance of frond-tissue. How unfortunate, then, is it
that both so persistently resist the efforts alike of collectors
and cultivators. As one of the two travellers beforementioned
I had previously visited the spot where we had
* On mountains in Borneo above 7000 feet a form of DipUris Horsfieldvi
grows freely among dacrydiums, droseras, dianella, dawsonia superba,
a tiny umbellifer, and other Australian types. It is dwarf, rarely above
two feet high, with glaucous leathery and brittle fronds, almost silvery
below.