it in these regions. They are what we naturalists call
_Apocynaceae_. The birds, however, eat those rosy seeds which you see
displayed from the ripe fruit, which has burst open.--But stay! There's
a fellow; I must have him." He raised his gun, and brought down a fine
jungle cock, which Merlin, who had accompanied us, instantly ran forward
to catch. He brought it to us, highly pleased with his performance.
"He, at all events, will afford a supper for a couple of us, hungry as
we may be," said my uncle. "This fellow, or his ancestors rather, is
the grandfather of all our domestic poultry in England. They have lost
a good deal of their beauty, to be sure, by civilisation, though they
may have improved in size and egg-laying powers."

I was fortunate in shooting a couple of great green fruit-pigeons
directly afterwards; indeed, in a short time we had as many birds as
would supply us for supper and breakfast. We were passing through a
wood which consisted chiefly of the great palm, which my uncle said the
Malays call the _gubbong_. The trees were in various conditions. Some
were simply in leaf, others had flowers on them, others fruit, while
many were dead, apparently ready to fall. The leaves were large and
fan-shaped, and I remarked that those which had flowers were destitute
of leaves; indeed, I could scarcely have supposed that they were the
same trees. The full-grown trees had lofty cylindrical stems, and were
mostly two hundred feet in height, and two or three feet in diameter.
The flowers were on the summit, in the form of a huge terminal spike.
On the top of this was the fruit, consisting of masses of smooth round
balls, of a green colour, and about an inch in diameter. My uncle told
me that each tree only flowers once in its life; and that when the fruit
ripens the tree dies, though it remains standing a year or two before it
falls to the ground. It was on a branch of one of these trees that I
saw the pigeons, where they had settled after feeding on the fruit.

We had gone a little way after I had last fired, when, as we were
standing under a tree looking for another shot, a shower of the fruit I
have described came falling down thickly about our heads. We quickly
ran from under it, when, looking up, my uncle shouted loudly, and
immediately a loud chattering was heard, and away scampered a whole
tribe of monkeys, making an enormous rustling as they leaped among the
dead palm-leaves. One would have fa