SUMATRA'S WEST COAST 



457 



SUMATRAN BRIDE AND GROOM 



From a photograoh by David G. Fair child 



for a few minutes to find yourself in the midst of the most lux- 

 uriant forest, with overtowering bamboos and treeferns, palms 

 and flowering shrubs, thickets of impenetrable rattan palms, low 

 bushes over which immense numbers of large black ants are 

 running, moist moss-covered banks, a tangled mass of liverworts, 

 filmy ferns, and lichens, with here and there an insect so closely 

 resembling the bits of lichen that even an expert entomologist 

 might pass it by unnoticed. Close by the path, in one of the most 

 fascinating of these many valleys, there was growing a clump of 



