Upon the humid coasts of Borneo and Sumatra, the _Casuarinas_ mingle their weeping branches with those of the mangroves and fig-trees. Palms are common in these two great islands, as well as at Ceylon and at Java. I may mention among the most useful the _Nipa fruticans_ and the Sugar Palm (_Areca saccharifera_). The transformed leaves which accompany the inflorescence of the Nipa are brimful of a sugared and effervescent liquid, which is extracted by pressure, and converted into a palm wine of indifferent quality, consumed in great quantities in the Sunda Archipelago. A very sweet liquid, a species of syrup fit for the confection of dainty sweetmeats, escapes from incisions made into the floral envelopes of the _Areca saccharifera_. A tree-wax, analogous to that of the _Croton sebiferum_, is furnished by the tree which the natives of Borneo designate Pallagrar-Minjok (_Dipterocarpus trinervis_). And, finally, it is at Borneo and at Sumatra we meet with the _Dryobabanops camphora_, whence is procured a species of camphor preferred by the Chinese to that of the _Laurus camphora_; the _Urceola elastica_, whose milky sap indurates into a kind of caoutchouc, called Suitawan; and the _Isonandra-Percha_ (genus _Bassia butyracea_, family of the Sapotaceæ), which of recent years has become the staple of an extensive commerce. It is from this tree we obtain the valuable product of gutta-percha, which has received such various and ingenious applications, and is scarcely less useful in the arts than in the sciences. [Illustration: FLORA OF THE EAST INDIAN ISLANDS:-- 1. Rafflesia Arnoldia. 2. Niphobolus pubescens. 3. Phalænopsis amabilis. 4. Ærides suaveolens. 5. Cycas circinnalis. 6. Nepenthes distillatoria. 7. Scindapsus pertusus.]