54 The Gardens of the Sun. [ch. iv. 



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 de- 

 struction 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 gar- 

 dens of beauty, wreathed with graceful climbing plants, 

 and gay with flowers and foliage. The fall of a large 



