construct in a few minutes by inserting a
small piece of Bamboo for a bowl obliquely into a large cylinder about
six inches from the bottom containing water, through which the smoke
passes to a long slender Bamboo tube. There are many other small matters
for which Bamboo is daily used, but enough has now been mentioned to
show its value. In other parts of the Archipelago I have myself seen it
applied to many new uses, and it is probable that my limited means of
observation did not make me acquainted with one-half the ways in which
it is serviceable to the Dyaks of Sarawak.

While upon the subject of plants I may here mention a few of the more
striking vegetable productions of Borneo. The wonderful Pitcher-plants,
forming the genus Nepenthes of botanists, here reach their greatest
development. Every mountain-top abounds with them, running along
the ground, or climbing over shrubs and stunted trees; their elegant
pitchers hanging in every direction. Some of these are long and slender,
resembling in form the beautiful Philippine lace-sponge (Euplectella),
which has now become so common; others are broad and short. Their
colours are green, variously tinted and mottled with red or purple.
The finest yet known were obtained on the summit of Kini-balou, in
North-west Borneo. One of the broad sort, Nepenthes rajah, will hold two
quarts of water in its pitcher. Another, Nepenthes Edwardsiania, has
a narrow pitcher twenty inches long; while the plant itself grows to a
length of twenty feet.

Ferns are abundant, but are not so varied as on the volcanic mountains
of Java; and Tree-ferns are neither so plentiful nor so large as on that
island. They grow, however, quite down to the level of the sea, and are
generally slender and graceful plants from eight to fifteen feet high.
Without devoting much time to the search I collected fifty species of
Ferns in Borneo, and I have no doubt a good botanist would have obtained
twice the number. The interesting group of Orchids is very abundant,
but, as is generally the case, nine-tenths of the species have small
and inconspicuous flowers. Among the exceptions are the fine Coelogynes,
whose large clusters of yellow flowers ornament the gloomiest
forests, and that most extraordinary plant, Vanda Lowii, which last
is particularly abundant near some hot springs at the foot of the
Penin-jauh Mountain. It grows on the lower branches of trees, and its us
strange pendant flower-spires often hang dow