Scientific Intelligence — Miscellaneous. 191 



observes, that unequalled and vast as is the elevation of the Giants 

 of Hemachal, no adequate conception of the vast mountain mass 

 can be formed by merely adverting to them. The best v^ay is to 

 contemplate the whole extent and general elevation of the snowy 

 region spreading over some 1800 to 2000 miles, with a breadth or 

 depth of 20 miles, peaks above 5 miles high, distributed through- 

 out its whole extent, and passes similarly extended, yet seldom or 

 never falling below 15,000 feet; and all this though we admit 

 Humboldt's somewhat theoretic negation of the general opinion, tha 

 Hemachal, and not, as he contends, Kuenlun, is the chain which 

 divides Asia from end to end! — B. H. Hodgson, Esq. 



18. Tamaway Forest in the Highlands of Scotland. — Few knew 

 what Tarnaway was in those days, — almost untrodden, except by the 

 deer, the roe, the foxes, and the pine-martins. Its green dells filled 

 with lilies of the valley, its banks covered with wild hyacinths, prim- 

 roses, and pyrolas, and its deep thickets clothed with every species 

 of woodland luxuriance, in blossoms, grass, moss, and timber of every 

 kind, growing with the magnificence and solitude of an aboriginal 

 wilderness, — a world of unknown beauty and silent loneliness, broken 

 only by the sough of the pines, the hum of the water, the hoarse 

 bell of the buck, the long wild cry of the fox, the shriek of the heron, 

 or the strange mysterious tap of the northern woodpecker. For ten 

 years we knew every dell, and bank, and thicket, and, excepting the 

 foresters and keepers, during the early part of that time, we can only 

 remember to have met three or four individuals. — Allen'' s Deer 

 Stalking. 



19. The Himalayan Mountains not favourable for Colonization. 

 — Such data, fortified by experience, will enable us to rate at its 

 proper worth the colonisation cant which so often fills the gazettes, 

 combined with the most exaggerated pictures of Himalayan resourccF, 

 and the most chimerical schemes for railways, in a country where we 

 are only too happy to find any roads at all. In sober truth, the re- 

 sources of the mountains are not many, and are already as much de- 

 veloped as the nature of the country will admit of. Consequent on 

 the cost of transport, the timber, tar, iron, hemp, madder, &c., can- 

 not, at any remunerating price, come into competition with the water- 

 borne articles of Europe, and other maritime lands ; or the supply 

 already equals the demand. The soil, except in the low valleys 

 where the European colonist cannot exist, is generally poor, besides 

 being pre-occupied, and often exhausted, by the aboriginal popula- 

 tion. Of the feelings with which these would regard any extensive 

 immigration of agricultural Europeans, we may judge by the dis- 

 satisfaction with which they reUnquished the comparatively trifling 

 lands required for the Tea plantations. The fine tracts of rich 

 meadow, which flank the Snowy Range, are too remote for settlers, 

 and are too high and too cold to ripen grain. It is certainly less salu- 



