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 Celogynes 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 
searce 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, 
§ 
