264 TROPICAL NATURE 



perate and frigid zones. It is amid the scanty vegetation of 

 the higher mountains and towards the limits of perpetual 

 snow that the alpine flowers are most brilliant and conspicu- 

 ous. Our own meadows and pastures and hillsides produce 

 more gay flowers than our woods and forests ; and, in the 

 tropics, it is in the parts where vegetation is less dense and 

 luxuriant that flowers most abound. In the damp and 

 uniform climate of the equatorial zone the mass of vegeta- 

 tion is greater and more varied than in any other part of the 

 globe, but in the great virgin forests themselves flowers are 

 rarely seen. After describing the forests of the Lower 

 Amazon, Mr. Bates asks : " But where were the flowers ? 

 To our great disappointment we saw none, or only such as 

 were insignificant in appearance. Orchids are rare in the 

 dense forests of the lowlands, and I believe it is now tolerably 

 well ascertained that the majority of the forest trees in 

 equatorial Brazil have small and inconspicuous flowers." 1 

 My friend Dr. Eichard Spruce assured me that by far the 

 greater part of the plants gathered by him in equatorial 

 America had inconspicuous green or white flowers. My own 

 observations in the Aru Islands for six months, and in Borneo 

 for more than a year, while living almost wholly in the 

 forests, are quite in accordance with this view. Conspicuous 

 masses of showy flowers are so rare that weeks and months 

 may be passed without observing a single flowering plant 

 worthy of special admiration. Occasionally some tree or 

 shrub will be seen covered with magnificent yellow or 

 crimson or purple flowers, but it is usually an oasis of colour 

 in a desert of verdure, and therefore hardly affects the 

 general aspect of the vegetation. The equatorial forest is too 

 gloomy for flowers or generally even for much foliage, except 

 of ferns and other shade-loving plants ; and were it not that 

 the forests are broken up by rivers and streams, by mountain 

 ranges, by precipitous rocks and by deep ravines, there would 

 be far fewer flowers visible than there are. Some of the 

 great forest trees have showy blossoms, and when these are 

 seen from an elevated point looking over an expanse of tree- 

 tops the effect is very grand ; but nothing is more erroneous 

 than the statement sometimes made that tropical forest trees 

 1 The Naturalist on the River Amazons, 2d ed., p. 38. 



