often described by travellers in Australia and the Pacific islands); useful Sago palms (_Metroxylon_); the sugar-yielding _Arenga_; the toddy or "rum" palm (_Caryota_); the Nipa, used for thatching; and, of course, the Coconut. As one travels eastward into the Pacific, this variety of palms thins out until at last only the Coconut remains on the coral islands. Of the other far-famed trees of the Malaysian forest there is the tall Duriān, with its evil-smelling, delicious-tasting fruit; there are stately, evergreen oaks, chestnuts, and mulberries; many kinds of fig trees--some growing like the Indian Banyan, with dependent roots that reach down from the far-spreading branches and form a grove of trees in time; others that live like grey, snaky parasites writhing about the trunks of victim trees, which in time they strangle; there are giant laurels, cinnamon laurels, huge myrtles, clove myrtles with their intensely aromatic flowerbuds, caoutchouc trees producing indiarubber, nutmeg trees, with their fragrant spice which so early drew traders to the most eastern part of the Malay Archipelago; and there are trees of sweet-smelling wood like the sandalwood and the _Aquilaria_ or eaglewood, others like the damar-attam (_Hopea_), which produce a valuable glass-like resin; there are two or more kinds of big-leaved Bread-fruit trees (_Artocarpus_), yielding their farinaceous, fig-like pods; and Artocarpi of a creeping habit whose branches are covered with small fig-like fruits remarkable for their gorgeous coloration--scarlet spotted with white, scarlet and purple, white and orange. Bamboos, often of huge girth, grow everywhere; orchids of incredible loveliness in colour and strangeness of form fringe the great boughs of the forest trees, which also afford harbourage to parasitic aroids of fantastic appearance; the glades are full of pitcher plants, ground orchids, brilliantly-coloured Cannas, "Grains-of-Paradise", calladiums with painted leaves, and wild bananas, with their beautiful, glossy, emerald-green fronds, or in some species with vividly coloured flower spikes. The marshy places are thickly grown with rushes resembling the papyrus of Africa; the shores of estuaries and low-lying coasts are the domain of tall mangroves and of the pandanus or screw pine--a semi-aquatic tree of the tropical parts of the Old World, which, with many aerial roots, and long, pointed, sword-like leaves, is distantly akin to the palms, and in Australasia produces fruit which is much eaten by the natives, especially in the Pacific Islands. These dense jungles of mangrove, pandanus, and other trees growing in the mud and brackish water--the habitat of mud-hopping fish, and numbers of large, brightly-coloured shore crabs, some so blue and so white and glossy that they are called "porcelain" crabs--were often a great barrier to the early explorers on the coasts of Borneo, Celebes, and Timor, besides being a prime hiding place for the _praus_ of the Malay pirates.