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264 TROPICAL NATUREperate and frigid zones. It is amid the scanty vegetation ofthe higher mountains and towards the limits of perpetualsnow that the alpine flowers are most brilliant and conspicuous.Our own meadows and pastures and hillsides producemore gay flowers than our woods and forests ; and, in thetropics, it is in the parts where vegetation is less dense andluxuriant that flowers most abound. In the damp anduniform climate of the equatorial zone the mass of vegetationis greater and more varied than in any other part of theglobe, but in the great virgin forests themselves flowers arerarely seen. After describing the forests of the LowerAmazon, Mr. Bates asks " : But where were the flowers ?To our great disappointment we saw none, or only such aswere insignificant in appearance. Orchids are rare in thedense forests of the lowlands, and I believe it is now tolerablywell ascertained that the majority of the forest trees inequatorial Brazil have small and inconspicuous flowers." 1My friend Dr. Eichard Spruce assured me that byfar thegreater part of the plants gathered by him in equatorialAmerica had inconspicuous green or white flowers.My ownobservations in the Aru Islands for six months, and in Borneofor more than a year, while living almost wholly in theforests, are quite in accordance with this view. Conspicuousmasses of showy flowers are so rare that weeks and monthsmay be passed without observing a single flowering plantworthy of special admiration. Occasionally some tree orshrub will be seen covered with magnificent yellow orcrimson or purple flowers, but it is usually an oasis of colourin a desert of verdure, and therefore hardly affects thegeneral aspect of the vegetation. The equatorial forest is toogloomy for flowers or generally even for much foliage, exceptof ferns and other shade-loving plants ;and were it not thatthe forests are broken up by rivers and streams, by mountainranges, by precipitous rocks and by deep ravines, there wouldbe far fewer flowers visible than there are. Some of thegreat forest trees have showy blossoms, and when these areseen from an elevated point looking over an expanse of treetopsthe effect is very grand ;but nothing is more erroneousthan the statement sometimes made that tropical forest trees1The Naturalist on the River Amazons, 2d ed., p. 38.