HOOKER'S 
JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
KEW GARDEN MISCELLANY. 
Extracts from the Private Letters of Dx. J. D. Hooker, written 
during a Botanical Mission to INDIA. 
CALCUTTA TO DARJEELING IN SIKKIM-HIMALAYAH.* 
We left Madras, as you are aware, on the evening of January 9th, 
and were steaming up one of the outlets of the many-mouthed Ganges 
(or the Hooghly, as it is called) on Wednesday the 12th. The Deltas 
of great rivers are always objects of very great interest to travellers, 
and especially to myself, who had circumnavigated the globe, but 
previous to our anchoring at Alexandria, never seen one. The est 
the Ganges is enormous, if compared with the length of that river 
and its tributaries (except, indeed, the Brahma-putra should prove the 
Yaru, or, as it is often called, Tsampo of Thibet), and, in this respect, 
the Nile and Ganges are not to be compared. The former has but few 
tributaries : none of them rise in very lofty land, or are of snowy origin ; 
and one only of its great branches carries any detritus, and its course 
is over rocky strata of excessive hardness for many leagues. The 
innumerable sources of the Gangetic Delta, again, are all, excepting 
the Soane, snow-born : its sources are in the drainage, partly of a dry 
climate (the transnivean sources) where snow accumulates in the 
* Tt should be borne in na that the information here given is extracted from 
etters to various friends, written after having passed the plains of India. Particular 
dates are consequently omi 
VOL. I. B 
