The whole of the rock face is a study.  Grasping with greedy white talons a piece of decaying wood is one of the prettiest of the more common orchids, DENDROBIUM SMILIAE which produces short spikes of waxy flowers, pink tipped with green; the creeping, sweet-scented, BULBOPHYLLUM BAILEYI, with greenish-yellow flowers spotted with purple, and the commonest of the dendrobiums (UNDULATUM) revel here.

The edge of the precipice looks over a tangle of jungle down upon the top of a giant milkwood tree (ALSTONIA SCHOLARIS), taken possession of by a colony of metallic starlings, whose hundreds of brown nests hang in clusters from the topmost branches.  By the perpetual shrieks and calls of these most lively of birds a straight course may be steered through the gloomy jungle to the tree, and thence to the beach, as a ship gains her haven through a fog by the sound of unseen warning horns and bell-surmounted rocks.  On the trunk of this great tree may still be seen the marks of stone tomahawks of the primitive inhabitants of the island.  There is none now to disturb and plunder the hasty birds.

STEALTHY MURDERERS

The fig-tree which aids the BAEA in its object of beautifying the precipice is one of a very numerously represented species, which assumes great variety of form, and produces fruit of varying quality.  This particular variety (ficus CUNNINGHAMII) begins life as a parasite.  A thin slender shoot, tremulously weak, leans lightly on the base of some tall tree, and finding agreeable conditions, clings and grows.  A harmless, tender, thong-like shoot it is—­a helpless plant, that could not stand alone or exist but for the hospitality of another of strength and substance.  Soon a second shoot, slight and frail, emerges near the root, but at a different angle from its aspiring brother, and others as delicate as the first follow, until the trunk of the host is sprawled over by naked running shoots, grey-green in colour, crafty and insidious.  As they increase in age the shoots flatten on the under surface and cross and recross.  Wheresoever they touch they coalesce.  The trunk becomes enveloped in living lace—­in a network, rather, living, ever growing and irregular—­the meshes of which gradually decrease in dimension.  All the while squeezing and causing decay, the meshes close up.  The trunk of the host is completely enclosed; it is the dying core of a living cylinder, for the first shoots have long since crept up among the branches, have expanded their leaves, and are busy sapping the life-blood of the tree at all points.  A greedy intractable, implacable foe, it gives no quarter, but flourishes upon its dead or dying friend, upon which in its youth it leaned delicately for support.  Finally it weaves its slender shoots among the topmost leaves of its victim, and having outgrown its growth, flourishes on its decay.