ll, leave flowers to adorn the
beds outside. We have turned out some of the fruit-trees to make
more room for flowers. This morning I have sown a quantity of
blue and purple convolvulus, which only display their beauties
to those who rise early before the sun closes their blossoms;
but we have flowers which only open at night, the moon-flower,
and night-blowing cereus, both white and fragrant. Dr. Little
has been travelling about the country looking for new plants. He
and Mr. Koch went to the top of the mountain of Poe near Lundu.
It was so cold six thousand feet above the level of the sea,
that they had to supply the natives who went with them with
blankets. At the very top of the mountain they found a new
orchid growing on the ground, a bright yellow flower, with
streaks of magenta colour inside. Dr. Little picked some of the
blossoms, and dug up one hundred roots, two of which he gave me;
but they will not live in my garden, they want mountain air. He
also gave me the dead flowers, and asked me to paint a picture
of one from his description and the faded blossom. I did it as
well as I could, but I fear it was not very good, and, after
all, the flower was not nearly as pretty as a bunch of laburnum
in England. They also found growing on the roots of a tree that
strange fungus flower described by Sir Stamford Raffles in his
book on Java and Sumatra--a yard wide across the petals,
brilliantly coloured red, purple, yellow and white, and, in the
hollow of the flower (nectarium), capable of holding twelve
pints of water, the whole weighing from fifteen to twenty
pounds; for it is a thick fleshy flower, not frail and delicate
as one likes a flower to be. It is very curious and gorgeous,
but as soon as it is fully expanded it begins to decay and
smells putrid. Sir James Brooke once found a specimen of this
gigantic flower in the jungle, and sent it to me to look at; but
it had lost all its beauty in the journey, and I held my nose as
I looked at it. The Dyaks said, "It is an auton" (spirit), which
is their explanation of anything they never saw before. The
natives of Sumatra call it "The Devil's sirih-box."[8] Are you
as fond of frogs as you used to be? Last week, some people were
dining with us. I had just helped the soup, and, letting my hand
fall upon my lap, picked up one of