12 DR. HOOKER’S MISSION TO INDIA. 
The country is barren all around, the villages only miserable lines 
of squalid huts straggling along the wood-side, with here and there a 
far from patriarchal Ficus to mark the village tree: the Borassus is 
the only Palm, and it is scarce and scattered. 
Strange to say, abundantly as the coal appears at the surface, it 
has never been, I am told, much used by the natives; no doubt, 
because wood is abundant. Since the English have worked it, how- 
ever, the people begin to burn it, though never for cooking. 
few miles beyond Taldangah we passed from over the sandstone, in 
which the coal lies, to a still more barren country of primary stratified 
rocks, upon which the former rests; the country still rising, more 
isolated hills or short ranges appearing, and towering far above all 
was Paras-Nath, the culminant point of this part of the — 4 
place whose botany I was most anxious to explore. 
At Gyna we found two tents pitched, one Mr. Williams', and the 
other that of a gentleman attached to the Survey, a third was still 
another stage a-head with Mr. Hadden, who preceded us to obtain 
information about the ascent of Paras-Nath. 
The botany of this country is very poor, no good-sized trees are to 
be seen, all is a low stunted jungle, like that described about Taldan- 
gah; and though the rock is so different, heve gneiss and there sand- 
stone, the prevailing tree vegetation was the same, Butea, a Diospyros, 
some Terminalias? and Acacia being the most frequent; but at this 
season none were in flower, and few in fruit. The grasses were few 
and dried up, except in the beds of the rivulets (or nullahs, as I am 
now accustomed to call them). On the low jungly hills the same plants 
appear, with a few Fici, Flacourtia, Bamboo in great abundance, but 
not large, nor in flower; several Acanthacee, some handsome; the 
beautiful yellow Linum trigynum, and a few herbaceous Composite, 
as Vicoa Indica, Spheranthus, Emilia, Blaiibillea, Conyza, &c. A 
few Asclepiadee climb up the bushes, and the odious Mucuna, now 
with over-ripe pods, by shaking which, as you pass, there often falls 
such a shower of the cow-itch as to make the skin tingle for an hour: 
the irritation on a thin skin, was, for a few minutes, intolerable, espe- 
cially as it generally managed to get up the arm. An Exacum, 
Erythrea centaurioides, and a Canscona, were not unfrequent herbs. 
February 1st.—Started at day-break ; we moved on to Gyna, another 
insignificant E The air was cool, and the atmosphere clear. The 
