56 DR. HOOKER'S MISSION TO INDIA. 
Jumna, and the northern feeders of the Godavery into the bay of 
Bengal. Further west, the two great chains again separate: the Vin- 
dhya, as I said before, running along the north bank of the Nerbudda 
to its débouche: the prolongation of the southern or Paras-Nath range, 
continuing parallel with the Vindhya on the opposite or south bank of 
the river, and called the Satpura hills. Chota Nagpore, near Main-path, 
is one of the most remarkable places on this range, near which Col. 
Ouseley, the Commissioner, has magnificent gardens, of which you may 
have heard, upon the hills; and there the descent to the hot, low, and 
pre-eminently tropical Teak jungles of Orissa is as sudden as is that at 
the Dunwah pass to the Gangetic plains. 
Feb. 12th.—Left Sheegotty at sunrise, crossing some small streams, 
affluents of the Ganges. Long ranges of low hills here rise suddenly 
out of the plains: they are of volcanic rocks, greenstone and syenite, 
apparently forcing up the beds of quartz and gneiss from below, which 
are exceedingly hard and dry, covered with the vegetation of the 
sterile soils. They were formerly used for the chain of telegraphic 
posts, communicating, I believe, from Calcutta to Benares. We halted 
at Nuddurpur. I sunk a thermometer three feet four inches in the soil, 
which maintained a constant temperature of 71° 5’, that of the air 
varying from 77° 5’ at 3 p.m., to 62° at day-light the following morn- 
ing, when we moved on to Nourungabad. 
The road being highly cultivated, and the Phenix becoming moré 
abundant, we encamped in a grove of these trees. All are curiously 
distorted, from the yearly cuts made to tap them for toddy. The 
incision is just below the crown, and slopes upwards and inwards: a 
vessel is hung below the wound, and the juice conducted into it by a 
little piece of Bamboo. The trunks grow all zigzag, from the practice of 
cutting alternately their opposite sides. This operation spoils the fruit, 
which, though eaten, is small, and much inferior to the African Date. 
Botanized along the course of a stream, and found many plants 
of the low plains of India, unknown on the hilly regions. Calotropis 
and Argemone were immensely abundant, with a purple Solanum (S. 
Indicum), Veronica Anagallis, Equisetum, a brilliant Gentianeous plant, 
(Exacum tetragonum,) and a small Potentilla, Trichodesma Indica, various 
Scrophularinee, Boraginee, Labiate, and other annuals, the analogues of 
English corn-field weeds, were all much withered and past flower. 
ere 
