e more beautiful of the
flowering plants are rhododendrons, orchids and pitcher-plants--the
latter reaching extraordinary development, especially in the northern
districts about Kinabalu. Epiphytous plants are very common, many that
are usually independent assuming here the parasitic character; the
_Vanda lowii_, for example, grows on the lower branches of trees, and
its strange pendent flower-stalks often hang down so as almost to reach
the ground. Ferns are abundant, but not so varied as in Java.

_Population._--The population of Borneo is not known with any approach
to accuracy, but according to the political divisions of the island it
is estimated as follows:--

Dutch Borneo 1,130,000
British North Borneo 200,000
Sarawak 500,000
Brunei 20,000

No effective census of the population has ever been taken, and vast
areas in Dutch Borneo and in British North Borneo remain unexplored, and
free from any practical authority or control. In Sarawak, owing to the
high administrative genius of the first raja and his successor, the
natives have been brought far more completely under control, but the
raja has never found occasion to utilize the machinery of his government
for the accurate enumeration of his subjects.

Dutch Borneo is divided for administrative purposes into two divisions,
the western and the south and eastern respectively. Of the two, the
former is under the more complete and effective control. The estimated
population in the western division is 413,000 and in the south and
eastern 717,000. Europeans number barely 1000; Arabs about 3000, and
Chinese, mainly in the western division, over 40,000. In both divisions
there is an average density of little more than 1 to every 2 sq. m. The
sparseness of the population throughout the Dutch territory is due to a
variety of causes--to the physical character of the country, which for
the most part restricts the area of population to the near neighbourhood
of the rivers; to the low standard of civilization to which the majority
of the natives have attained and the consequent disregard of sanitation
and hygiene; to wars, piracy and head-hunting, the last of which has not
even yet been effectually checked among some of the tribes of the
interior; and to the aggression and oppressions in earlier times of
Malayan, Arab and Bugis settlers. Among the natives, more especially of
the interior, an innate restlessne