25 



hectare, and what is true of an average Philippine forest is at 

 least approximately true of other forested areas in Malaya. In 

 the eastern tropics gregarious forests scarcely exist except in 

 the mangrove swamps, in those countries where pines occur, in 

 certain countries where teak grows, and in some types of 

 dipterocarp forests such as the sal of India and Burma; other 

 dipterocarp forests approach the gregarious type. 



The complexity of primary or virgin equatorial forests is 

 excellently indicated by the following quotations from Alfred 

 Russell Wallace:* 



"The observer new to the scene would perhaps be first struck 

 by the varied yet symmetrical trunks, which rise up with perfect 

 straightness to a great height without a branch, and which, 

 being placed at a considerable average distance apart, give an 

 impression of some enormous building. Overhead, at a height, 

 perhaps, of a hundred and fifty feet, is an almost unbroken 

 canopy of foliage formed by the meeting together of these great' 

 trees and their interlacing branches; and this canopy is so dense 

 that but an indistinct glimmer of the sky is to be seen and even 

 the intense tropical sunlight only penetrates to the ground 

 subdued and broken up into scattered fragments. . . . The 

 great trees we have hitherto been describing form, however, but 

 a portion of the forest. Beneath their lofty canopy there often 

 exists a second forest of moderate-sized trees, whose crowns, 

 perhaps forty or fifty feet high, do not touch the lowermost 

 branches of those above them. . . . Yet beneath this second 

 set of medium-sized forest trees there is often a third under- 

 growth of small trees from six to ten feet high, of dwarf palms, 

 of tree-ferns, and of gigantic herbaceous ferns. Yet lower, 

 on the surface of the ground itself, we find much variety." 



Terrestrial herbaceous plants may be entirely absent, or 

 may be fairly abundant, depending on local climatic conditions. 

 The number of species of these is usually not great. Lianes are 

 frequently abundant, clambering into the tops of the highest 

 trees. Epiphytes, depending on the relative humidity, may or 

 may not be abundant or conspicuous. 



Many forested areas in Borneo conform to the general 

 characters indicated above, but in large areas the primary or 

 virgin forest has largely been destroyed, or its character pro- 

 foundly altered by the activities of the native population. Miss 

 Gibbs in speaking of the vegetation of the interior of British 

 North Borneo enroute to Mount Kinabalu notes f that: "The 

 whole country with its endless hill ranges, ranging from 3,000- 



* Natural Selection and Tropical Nature (1895) 240, 243, 244. 

 fjourn. Linn. Soc. Bot. 42 (1914) 9, 10. 



