58 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
tion is most luxuriant, the climate is unfortunately so unhealthy as to 
preclude anything beyond the most rapid transit. The routes, however, 
are the more interesting from including a tract of country intervening 
between those districts explored by Drs. Wallich and Royle. 
First stage, Almorah to Munjerd, eighteen miles. The Kosilla river 
flows through a very deep and impracticable gorge, formed on both 
sides of granite, and the granite reaching to within a few hundred feet 
of the summit of Seeahee Devee (covered with Pines), 7,200. The 
water, clear as crystal, dashes on amidst quartz rocks, or reposes in 
deep blue and green pools, its banks covered with a subtropical vege- 
tation, * which may have crept in with the tigers and hot winds, be- 
hind the alpine oak-crowned barrier of the Gagur.’ On the Khyrna 
river, whose cold-flowing waters come from a far country, elevated only 
3,000 feet, there was severe hoar-frost at night. In the list of plants 
we find Bauhinias, Dalbergia and Acacias mixed with Clematis, Thalic- 
trum, Pyrus, and Rosa Brunonii ; Bauhinia Vahlii yields a strong and 
excellent rope in the fibre of its bark, while the leaves are in general use 
to contain ghee ; and Dalbergia Ougeinensis affords admirable timber for 
ploughs, furniture, &c. The enormous tubers of Pueraria tuberosa are 
collected and exported to the plains on account of their cooling proper- 
ties. The fruit of Terminalia Chebula is called “mother of doctors.” 
Réttlera tinctoria of the plains meets Andromeda ovalifolia at an eleva- 
tion of 4,000 feet. The native name for Sazifraga ciliata is “ Sil- 
phora”’ (the stone-breaker),—the same derivation as our own appella- 
tion. One is surprised to find here several north of Europe plants, 
as Nasturtium officinale, Ranunculus sceleratus, Veronica Anagallis, &e., 
only at very inferior elevations of the mountains: they disappear be- 
tween 4,000 and 5,000 feet, “a circumstance which may be accounted 
for, as hinted by Humboldt, by the diminished pressure of the atmos- 
phere.” i 
To Nynee Tal, twelve or fourteen miles, involving an ascent of 
4475 feet, of which a considerable portion is steep and continuous to 
the Ulmah-ka-khan pass, 7431 feet above Calcutta. During the latter 
portion of the ascent the mountain sent. becomes Fue dunt grand : 
to the right and a-head, the vast summit le steeps of Chee- 
nur (“the broad-browed monarch of the Gagur, 8,526 feet high") are 
feathered with Cypress and Oak ; to the left are Lurria Kanta Peak and 
its spurs; to the north, at a profound depth, is the bed of the torrent, 
