In the Philippines vegetation is singularly favoured by the humidity of the climate and the elevation of the temperature, so that the Flora of these richly-endowed islands displays a prodigious variety. Not a single family of tropical plants but is here represented by several species. Hill and valley and plain alike are characterized by the exuberant growth of leaf and fruit and flower; the graceful forms might have enchanted an ancient Greek, the wealth of glowing and intense colour would have fired the imagination of Turner, and defied the palette of Titian or Tintoretto. There are landscapes of such beauty and fertility as the fancy of artist or poet never conceived. Ferns and Orchids are, perhaps, even more abundant here than in the forests of Java, Borneo, or Sumatra. The Bamboo attains to unusual proportions; the Areca (_Areca catechu_) raises to the sky its tall shapely stem, crested with plume-like leaves; and the Betel-nut tree supplies in profusion the grains which, mixed with the fruits of the gigantic palm, constitute the _Pinangue_; a kind of _quid_, which the Orientals chew delightedly, and to which they attribute very valuable stomachic and digestive properties. Under the dense shade of the great forests we are amazed by untold numbers of various kinds of plants, all adorned by richly coloured leaves, which invest the scene with a singular charm, nay, with something of a fairy character; and amongst these we single out the _Dracæna terminalis_, with its blood-empurpled foliage, which, recently introduced into Europe, has already become one of the greatest ornaments of our parks and gardens.