BOTANICAL INFORMATION, 553 
the falls we passed through the garden and grounds belong- 
ing to Kaitie, the property of Lord Elphinstone. On the 
right hand side of the avenue leading to the house there is 
a remarkably healthy English Oak tree, nearly twenty feet 
high; and nearly opposite to it a few Cypresses about the 
same height. The garden contains various kinds of Eu- 
ropean fruit trees, such as the Peach, Apple, Plum and Pear. 
The Peach bears plentifully, but its fruit, like that which I 
have met with on the mountains of South America, is very 
far inferior to what is grown in the open air in England. 
Apples do not succeed, those I saw being as small as 
Crabs, and very little superior to them in flavour. As 
in the other gardens on the hills," European flowers and 
vegetables thrive admirably. The road to the falls from 
the house leads through a long, flat valley, along which a 
small stream runs. In this valley very few plants were 
in flower: notwithstanding that it is much lower than the 
valley in which Ootacamund is situated, vegetation had 
suffered much more from the frosts of January. ‘The young 
leaves and branches of the Barberry, the Bramble, and other 
shrubs, all appeared as if they had been scorched by fire. 
There was scarcely any herbaceous vegetation, and many of 
the trees and shrubs being here deciduous, the country bore 
avery wintry appearance. The banks of the stream were 
lined with the Barberry, Ligustrum Perottetii, Rhamnus 
hirsutus, the Rhododendron, Salix tetrasperma, and Rubus 
` Wailichianus. On more elevated parts Cotoneaster buxifolia 
grew very profusely; but here we met with none of it in. 
flower. The stream which flows through this valley is about 
' the size of the one which runs through Campsie Glen, near 
Glasgow, and is joined by another of equal magnitude 
immediately above the fall which is a slightly inclined 
basaltic precipice about two hundred feet in height. After 
this gentle leap, the water flows through a beautiful wooded 
valley into the Coimbatore country. At the upper part of 
the fall, we collected a pretty species of Asystasia, Carissa — a 
Paucinervia, A. Dé 6, Exacum Wi ightianum, and a very 
VOL. IV. * -* 
