8 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



ful scrutiny shows to be a miniature orchid. There 

 are few butterflies in the forest, but now and then, if 

 you are by one of the openings among the trees, which 

 are to the winged creatures what the paths are to us, 

 you may see a moth or butterfly pass by flapping its 

 heavy velvet wings. You seldom hear a bird, but if 

 you are quiet and wait long enough some tiny sun- 

 bird may come your way, or, perhaps, some weird bird 

 with light-blue eyes and an enormous tail; or a jungle- 

 hen may creep out from under a bush, and scratch for 

 ants' eggs in an open space where a tree has fallen. 

 The only other thing that you will see, except an 

 occasional lizard, will be ants, and perhaps a mille- 

 pede. If you know where to look for them, you 

 will see the tracks of four-footed animals, but you 

 will not see the animals themselves. 



But in a forest which you know to be so vast 

 and so boundless you have a right to expect more 

 than you have seen. Ants, a butterfly, even a bird, 

 do not and cannot represent the life of this great 

 gloomy place. But more you cannot see. You are 

 the centre of a small circle whose radius varies from 

 fifteen to thirty yards. Inside this circle you can 

 see more or less distinctly ; outside it everything is 

 hidden. Even so huge an animal as an elephant is 

 sometimes invisible at fifteen yards, and almost al- 

 ways invisible at thirty yards. Wherever you go you 

 carry with you that little circle outside which lies the 

 unknown. The path that lies behind you is, as soon 

 as it passes outside that circle, as full of the unknown 

 as the path before you or the tangle on either side. 

 So little do you see that the feeling comes over 



