Here and there on the river banks and coasts are a few Convolvulaceae, not equal to our garden Ipomaeas, and in the deepest shades of the forest some fine scarlet and purple Zingiberaceae, but so few and scattered as to be nothing amid the mass of green and flowerless vegetation.

Yet the noble Cycadaceae and screw-pines, thirty or forty feet high, the elegant tree ferns, the lofty palms, and the variety of beautiful and curious plants which everywhere meet the eye, attest the warmth and moisture of the tropics, and the fertility of the soil.
It is true that Aru seemed to me exceptionally poor in flowers, but this is only an exaggeration of a general tropical feature; for my whole experience in the equatorial regions of the west and the east has convinced me, that in the most luxuriant parts of the tropics, flowers are less abundant, on the average less showy, and are far less effective in adding colour to the landscape than in temperate climates.

I have never seen in the tropics such brilliant masses of colour as even England can show in her furze-clad commons, her heathery mountain-sides, her glades of wild hyacinths, her fields of poppies, her meadows of buttercups and orchises--carpets of yellow, purple, azure-blue, and fiery crimson, which the tropics can rarely exhibit.

We, have smaller masses of colour in our hawthorn and crab trees, our holly and mountain-ash, our boom; foxgloves, primroses, and purple vetches, which clothe with gay colours the whole length and breadth of our land, These beauties are all common.

They are characteristic of the country and the climate; they have not to be sought for, but they gladden the eye at every step.