Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

INTRODUCTION
orchids, ferns, fungi, mosses, lichens, and of plants that climb (guttas,
rattans, peppers, ficuses, to mention a few that are obvious), some
by utilising their stems (serpent-fashion) for twining round their
sturdier neighbours, others by use of their leaf-stalks, by modification
of the leaves themselves, by adventitious roots, tendrils, " suction-
pads," suckers, curved hooks, and all other imaginable grappling
devices and developments of which the botanical world is capable.
Next to this struggle for light, heat, and moisture, which is terrible
in its almost passionate intensity, comes the need for self-protection,
and to some extent, perhaps, as a corollary of this, the need for the
efficient propagation of the species. To the first of these two causes
we owe the huge number of prickly, thorny plants, shrubs, and trees
that seem in places to turn the forest into a vast natural vegetable
armoury (the rattans, a great number of palms, many creepers, and
trees with prickly fruits, such as the durian, belong to these) ; the
plants with bitter or poisonous sap, the glass-like spicules of the
leaf- cases of the bamboo, and the stings of the giant tree-nettle,
the terror of man and beast, under the branches of one of which I
have myself ridden on elephant-back. To the second cause we owe
such curiosities in the history of dispersion as the " fillcup "-fruit,
whose " sail " gives it a rotatory motion that enables it to bore into
the ground at the tree's foot, and the great pincushion-like (albeit
barbed) heads of the spinifex grass on the east coast of the Peninsula,
which goes bowling over the sand at the rate of an express train,
till it catches against a fallen branch or log or similar obstruction,
where it is most likely to find the depressions that collect the
moisture.
In the animal kingdom of the Peninsula this specialising tendency
is not less distinctly marked. For instance, the colour of the
black leopard (or panther, as it is variously called), which is an
exclusively nocturnal animal, furnishes it with a most effective
means of concealment, and when we observe how cunningly its
sable hue (which might otherwise become conspicuous, as a mass,
from its very uniformity) is in one species at least mottled and
diversified by greyish rosettes, which produce, with an almost
startling fidelity to nature, the effect of moonhght shining through
leaves, it becomes impossible to withhold our admiration of the
design. The striped colouring of the tiger and civet, the mottled
skin of the yellow, spotted panther and tiger-cat, are undoubtedly due
to the same instinctive selection for stalking, or what may be called
"strategic" purposes. So too in the colour of the crocodile, which has
no enemies to fear in its own domain, we have an admirable example
of " strategic " colouring, for it is the exact counterpart of the tidal
mudbanks, and especially of the slime-covered logs that lie scattered
about them, the "deception" being so complete that even the mouse-
deer, monkeys, and other small game which go down to the water