26 ON THE VEGETATION OF MALAYSIA, 



Indian Archipelago, the Philippines and South China, having 

 large acid fruits, black or white when ripe ; Cerhera odallarn, 

 Gaertn., a glossy evergreen tree with white flowers and oval or 

 elliptical green fruits (black when ripe), said to be extremely 

 poisonous, but the seed of which is pressed for lamp oil ; 

 Erythrina ovalijolia, Roxb., with large dull purple flowers and 

 the trunk armed with sharp thorns ; Dalbergia pongamia, DerriSy 

 and other climbing leguminous plants, including Abrus precatoriuSy 

 L., whose scarlet and black seeds are known all over the world. 



The above are the common and conspicuous trees and shrubs 

 amongst the Mangroves on the whole of the Malayan sea-coast. 

 There are also found along the banks of the estuarine streams on 

 the west coasts of the Peninsula, Nipa fruticans, Wurmb., a 

 Palm-tree which has not the advantage of a stem, but yet forms 

 one of the most attractive and interesting members of the order. 

 It lines the lower part of many of the coast streams to the 

 exclusion of almost every other vegetation. It is difficult to 

 describe the singular efiect of long lines of feathery palm-leaves, 

 twenty to thirty feet long, gathered in thick clusters on both sides 

 of a river. The plant is one of the giants of vegetation, and it is 

 as useful as it is big. The leaves are cut down and form all the 

 houses in the Malay region. The pinnge of the fronds are plaited 

 in various forms to make walls, wainscots, and partitions. 

 Throughout Malaysia the people have no other roof for their 

 dwellings than these fronds laid over each other like tiles, giving 

 a leafy covering more or less impervious to rain. It is good 

 enough unless when the wind lifts it up, and then woe to the 

 interior of the dwelling in a tropical storm. This is the well- 

 known attap roof universal in the Peninsula. 



Further up the banks the thicket is intermingled with a fern 

 which is a giant of its kind ( Acrostichum aureum, L.) with fronds 

 eight and ten feet long, and a showy prickly Acanthaceous plant 

 with blue and white flowers (Acanthus ilicifolius, L.), both of 

 which are as common in Northern Queensland as they are 

 in the Malay Peninsula. A Screw-pine (Pandanus) almost com- 



