IN SUMATRA. 133 



To obtain specimens of the ancient arboreal race was a task 

 slow and difficult of accomplishment ; for but few trees could be 

 felled in one day, and good eyes were required to tell at a 

 height of 150ft. or 200ft. if there were fruit or flower to reward 

 the labour and time spent in the operation ; and when, after 

 hard toil, a great tree came crashing down, letting in the 

 sunlight on the damp ground, the beauty of the foliage and of 

 the flowers or fruit was often a rich recompense for the labour. 

 It was a happy thing, that such a giant could not fail to 

 bring to the ground portions of one or more of his neighbours 

 in his downfall, large enough to afford grand specimens. 



No one could fail to be attracted by the at first unusual 

 sight of trees bearing their blossoms, or fruit, or both, in great 

 profusion on their bare trunks. Of these the oftenest recurring 

 belong to a group producing some of the most beautiful trees 

 and shrubs in the world, the Ternstraemacese, or Tea-family, 

 to which the Camellia belongs. The pendent pure white or 

 pink-flushed, golden-centred corollas of the Saurayas, (duster 

 round their trunks, hiding them for twenty or thirty feet of 

 their height, like maypoles busked for a fete. Besides orchids 

 and the Asclepiadacesa which contain the wax-plants, or Hoyas, 

 the brightest epiphytes were certainly the species of Mschy- 

 nanthes, many of vhich have drooping bell-flowers of the 

 deepest scarlet. 



Zoological prizes had just as diligently to be searched for as 

 botanical trophies ; as in the case of flowers, insects, birds and 

 other animals do not wait, even in the profuse tropics, at every 

 blossom, or on every branch for the collector's net and the 

 hunter's gun. In thedepths of the virgin forest little life is to 

 be seen ; there, an oppressive silence reigns. One hears occasion- 

 ally only a distant note from some bird or mammal, or the stridu- 

 lating of a cicad on a tree trunk far out of eye-shot, and in the 

 second growth, if these are more abundant as the ear asserts, 

 they are as difficult, from numerous obstacles to sight and 

 progress, to see or secure. The ornithologist and the entomo- 

 logist obtain most of their treasures in the small virgin forest 

 patches in the neighbourhood of villages, in wide shady paths 

 in the great forest, and along sunny walks amid the opened 

 portions of the second growth. 



I was fortunate in finding a little of all this description of 



