ii EQUATORIAL VEGETATION 257 



plants or clumps, which are seldom large or conspicuous 

 as compared with the great mass of vegetation around them. 

 It is only at long intervals that the traveller meets with any- 

 thing which recalls the splendour of our orchid-houses and 

 flower shows. The slender-stalked golden Oncidiums of the 

 flooded forests of the Upper Amazon ; the grand Cattleyas of 

 the drier forests ; the Caelogynes of the swamps, and the re- 

 markable Vanda lowii of the hill forests of Borneo, are the 

 chief examples of orchid beauty that have impressed them- 

 selves on the memory of the present writer during twelve 

 years' wandering in tropical forests. The last-named plant is 

 unique among orchids, its comparatively small cluster of leaves 

 sending out numerous flower -stems, which hang down like 

 cords to a length of eight feet, and are covered with numbers 

 of large star-like crimson-spotted flowers. 



Bamboos 



The gigantic grasses called bamboos can hardly be classed 

 as typical plants of the tropical zone, because they appear to 

 be rare in the entire African continent and are comparatively 

 scarce in South America. They also extend beyond the 

 geographical tropics in China and Japan as well as in Northern 

 India. It is, however, within the tropics and towards the 

 equator that they attain their full size and beauty, and it is 

 here that the species are most numerous and offer that variety 

 of form, size, and quality which renders them so admirable a 

 boon to man. A fine clump of large bamboos is perhaps the 

 most graceful of all vegetable forms, resembling the light and 

 airy plumes of the bird of paradise copied on a gigantic scale 

 in living foliage. Such clumps are often eighty or a hundred 

 feet high, the glossy stems, perhaps six inches thick at the 

 base, springing up at first straight as an arrow, tapering 

 gradually to a slender point, and bending over in elegant 

 curves with the weight of the slender branches and grassy 

 leaves. The various species differ greatly in size and propor- 

 tions, in the comparative length of the joints, in the thickness 

 and strength of the stem-walls, in their straightness, smooth- 

 ness, hardness, and durability. Some are spiny, others are 

 unarmed ; some have simple stems, others are thickly set with 

 branches ; while some species even grow in such an irregular, 



