stalk. Specimens grown in our English hot-houses have produced flower-spires
of equal length, and with a much larger number of blossoms.
Flowers were scarce, as is usual in equatorial forests, and it was only at rare
intervals that I met with anything striking. A few fine climbers were sometimes
seen, especially a handsome crimson and yellow Aeschynanthus, and a fine
leguminous plant with clusters of large Cassia-like flowers of a rich purple
colour. Once I found a number of small Anonaceous trees of the genus
Polyalthea, producing a most striking effect in the gloomy forest shades. They
were about thirty feet high, and their slender trunks were covered with large star-
like crimson flowers, which clustered over them like garlands, and resembled
some artificial decoration more than a natural product.
The forests abound with gigantic trees with cylindrical, buttressed, or
furrowed stems, while occasionally the traveller comes upon a wonderful fig-
tree, whose trunk is itself a forest of stems and aerial roots. Still more rarely are
found trees which appear to have begun growing in mid-air, and from the same
point send out wide-spreading branches above and a complicated pyramid of
roots descending for seventy or eighty feet to the ground below, and so
spreading on every side, that one can stand in the very centre with the trunk of
the tree immediately overhead. Trees of this character are found all over the
Archipelago, and the accompanying illustration (taken from one which I often
visited in the Aru Islands) will convey some idea of their general character. I
believe that they originate as parasites, from seeds carried by birds and dropped
in the fork of some lofty tree. Hence descend aerial roots, clasping and
ultimately destroying the supporting tree, which is in time entirely replaced by
the humble plant which was at first dependent upon it. Thus we have an actual
struggle for life in the vegetable kingdom, not less fatal to the vanquished than
the struggles among animals which we can so much more easily observe and
understand. The advantage of quicker access to light and warmth and air, which
is gained in one way by climbing plants, is here obtained by a forest tree, which
has the means of starting in life at an elevation which others can only attain after
many years of growth, and then only when the fall of some other tree has made
room for then. Thus it is that in the warm and moist and equable climate of the
tropics, each available station is seized upon and becomes the means of
developing new forms of life especially adapted to occupy it.
On reaching Sarawak early in December, I found there would not be an
opportunity of returning to Singapore until the latter end of January. I therefore
accepted Sir James Brooke's invitation to spend a week with him and Mr. St.
John at his cottage on Peninjauh. This is a very steep pyramidal mountain of