A rich harvest of botanical discovery still remains for the scientific explorer of the districts south and east of Adam’s Peak, whence Dr. Gardner’s successor, Mr. Thwaites, has already brought some remarkable species.  Many of the Ceylon orchids, like those of South America, exhibit a grotesque similitude to various animals; and one, a Dendrobium., which the Singhalese cultivate in the palms near their dwelling, bears a name equivalent to the White-pigeon flower, from the resemblance which its clusters present to a group of those birds in miniature clinging to the stem with wings at rest.

But of this order the most exquisite plant I have seen is the Anaectochilus setaceus, a terrestrial orchid which is to be found about the moist roots of the forest trees, and has drawn the attention of even the apathetic Singhalese, among whom its singular beauty has won for it the popular name of the Wanna Raja, or “King of the Forest.”  It is common in humid and shady places a few miles removed from the sea-coast; its flowers have no particular attraction, but its leaves are perhaps the most exquisitely formed in the vegetable kingdom; their colour resembles dark velvet, approaching to black, and reticulated over all the surface with veins of ruddy gold.[1]

[Footnote 1:  There is another small orchid bearing a slight resemblance to the wanna raja, which is often found growing along with it, called by the Singhalese iri raja, or “striped king.”  Its leaves are somewhat bronzed, but they are longer and narrower than those of the wanna raja; and, as its Singhalese name implies, it has two white stripes running through the length of each.  They are not of the same genus; the wanna raja being the only species of Anaectochilus yet found in Ceylon.]

The branches of all the lower trees and brushwood are so densely covered with convolvuli, and similar delicate climbers of every colour, that frequently it is difficult to discover the tree which supports them, owing to the heaps of verdure under which it is concealed.  One very curious creeper, which always catches the eye, is the square-stemmed vine[1], whose fleshy four-sided runners climb the highest trees, and hang down in the most fantastic bunches.  Its stem, like that of another plant of the same genus (the Vitis Indica), when freshly cut, yields a copious draught of pure tasteless fluid, and is eagerly sought after by elephants.

[Footnote 1:  Cissus edulis, Dalz.]

But it is the trees of older and loftier growth that exhibit the rank luxuriance of these wonderful epiphytes in the most striking manner.  They are tormented by climbing plants of such extraordinary dimensions that many of them exceed in diameter the girth of a man; and these gigantic appendages are to be seen surmounting the tallest trees of the forest, grasping their stems in firm convolutions, and then flinging their monstrous tendrils over the larger limbs till