genus Polyalthea, producing a most striking effect in the gloomy
forest shades. They were about thirty feet high, and their
slender trunks were covered with large star-like crimson flowers,
which clustered over them like garlands, and resembled some
artificial decoration more than a natural product.

The forests abound with gigantic trees with cylindrical,
buttressed, or furrowed stems, while occasionally the traveller
comes upon a wonderful fig-tree, whose trunk is itself a forest
of stems and aerial roots. Still more rarely are found trees
which appear to have begun growing in mid-air, and from the same
point send out wide-spreading branches above and a complicated
pyramid of roots descending for seventy or eighty feet to the
ground below, and so spreading on every side, that one can stand
in the very centre with the trunk of the tree immediately
overhead. Trees of this character are found all over the
Archipelago, and the accompanying illustration (taken from one
which I often visited in the Aru Islands) will convey some idea
of their general character. I believe that they originate as
parasites, from seeds carried by birds and dropped in the fork of
some lofty tree. Hence descend aerial roots, clasping and
ultimately destroying the supporting tree, which is in time
entirely replaced by the humble plant which was at first
dependent upon it. Thus we have an actual struggle for life in
the vegetable kingdom, not less fatal to the vanquished than the
struggles among animals which we can so much more easily observe
and understand. The advantage of quicker access to light and
warmth and air, which is gained in one way by climbing plants, is
here obtained by a forest tree, which has the means of starting
in life at an elevation which others can only attain after many