DARJEELING TO THIBET. 15 
From the ridge of Sinchul a good view is obtainable, when the 
weather permits; but, often as I ascended it, for the first month I 
never saw beyond the very nearest tree-trunks. Though sharp and 
steep-sided, scarcely a piece of rock is anywhere visible ; what there is, ` 
is a friable gneiss, like that of Darjeeling. The clay-banks are covered 
with Mosses. and Marchantie, chiefly the former, and species of Poly- 
trichum. t 
Fungi are immensely numerous in the moist woods, especially the 
Hymenomycetes. Of these the majority are dry on the cap (always 
except with the rain,—not viscid, L mean), inodorous, and edible. I 
am sure there are not fewer than 1,000 Agarics. indigenous to this 
part of the Himalaya, and probably many more. All are very 
brittle and difficult to preserve, drying worse by far than the average 
of the English species. Where-phytivorous insects are so numerous, 
their destruction is very rapid, eveu in the drying papers before they 
are six hours gathered,—having been d/own, no doubt, by Diptera, 
before being pressed. 
Dr. Campbell has given me a sketch of that. beautiful Phallus, 
figured in Beechey's * Voyage, * which grew annually on. some bamboo 
stumps near Cattmandu (in Nepal): he has also seen it. here. Three 
or four smaller species of Lycoperdon are.common ; but the Bovistine, 
as a tribe, want more sunny pasture. Agaricus campestris. rarely 
appears, and only in the artificially grassed paddocks near the residents’ 
dwellings is it abundant. Mucedinee are. amazingly intrusive in the 
valley of Nepal and on, the plains, as you might suppose from. the damp- 
ness of the climate, I think I have a different species on each of the 
* moist colours" in my paint-box; there is one on my English boots, 
another on. my country-made shoes ; and. except fire and. hard metal it 
is. difficult to name any substance free from them.T Hitherto I have. 
met with only a single underground Fungus, this-tribe probably prefer- 
ring the drier and. warmer woods to these excessively humid ones, as is. 
the case, I think, in England; for, if I remember aright, Broome found. 
the Scotch woods too.damp, and the Welsh also. Some of the Agarics 
here assume anomalous. forms, so beautiful and. apparently normal, 
that it was with hesitation L first, classed them with monsters. A com- 
* P. Demonum. Ur 
died asi is Lr c ee field-glass of my 
