TROPICAL FLOWERS, 
9 t 
to expect a wonderful profusion of fine flowers 
in the tropics, not to have been needless. Speak- 
ing of Sumatra, he says : “ This [the flower] is 
just one of the products of the Garden of the 
Sun that the traveller fails to see, unless he 
search very well and very closely. The vegeta- 
tion at the lower elevations leaves the impres- 
sion of a tangled heterogeneous mass of foliage 
of every shape and shade, mingled together in 
such unutterable confusion that not one single 
plant stands out in anything like its own indi- 
viduality in his mind. The great forest -trees 
are too high for him to be able to see whether 
they bear either fruit or flowers. It is only on 
rare occasions — and then the sight repays him 
for many a weary mile — that he alights on a 
grand specimen whose top is ablaze with crimson 
or gold ; more generally he knows that some 
high tree is performing its functions by seeing 
broken petals or fallen fruit spread over yards 
of the ground. Hours and hours, sometimes 
days even, I have traversed a forest -bounded 
road without seeing a blossom gay enough to 
attract admiration. A vast amount of tropical 
vegetation has small, inconspicuous flowers, of 
a more or less green colour, so that when they 
do occur the eye fails to detect them readily. 
