BOTANY OF THE MOUNTAINS OF KUMAOON. 59 
blocked up with great boulders,—and over and beyond it the long 
line of the Snowy Range. The forest on the road-side consists for the 
most part of Pinus longifolia and Quercus incana, both of large dimen- 
sions. From the crest of Ulmah-ka-khan there is an abrupt descent of 
about 1,100 feet to Nynee Tal, a celebrated, but still somewhat over- 
praised lake, a small tarn, indeed, extending about seven furlongs in 
length, with a maximum breadth of about two and a quarter; the 
greatest depth is eighty feet. The water is perfectly clear, and under the 
generality of the skyey influences, exhibits a blue which reminds the 
traveller of a reach of the upper Rhine or Lake Zug, in ae 
the latter is however much larger than Nynee Tal. Near 
the surface is matted with a tangled mass of Potamogeton Apiai 
Myriophyllum Indicum, Chara verticillata, Polygonum scabrinervium, and 
the pretty English Polygonum amphibium, which here, and here only 
in India, so far as Major Madden’s experience goes, raises its pink spikes 
above the water. Wherever free from these plants, the surface reflects 
its splendid frame-work of mountain and wood, like a mirror. The 
lake is separated from the plains to the south-west by the rugged 
mountains of Uyarpata, so named from the predominance of Andro- 
meda in its woods, which also abound in admirable specimens of the 
green Oak, Quercus dilatata. Ghiwalee is an extensive tract adjoining, 
south of Uyarpata, with precipices to the very brink, of which the 
woods are composed of Oak, Ash, Maple, Siberian Crab, Cypress, and 
other northern forms ; while the sward abounds in the Primula denticu- 
lata, Parnassia nubicola, &c., and Peeony at no great distance. Im- 
mediately beneath is the semitropical vegetation of northern India. 
e cliffs are slowly wearing away ; and many of these Oaks, &c., must 
be carried down by the torrents to mingle with Naucleas, Odinas, &c., 
below 
On reaching the crest, as seen from the lake, it is found to run back 
towards the north-west for perhaps 1,200 yards, as a level ridge, 
exactly in the line and direction of the lake's length. This summit is 
clothed’ with a brushwood of Indigofera, Spiræa, Hlsholzia, and Salis : 
Androsace lanuginosa covers the rocks : Anemone discolor occurs in the 
shaded places; and at the cairn of the surveyors, grew a new Stellaria 
(semivestita, Edgew.) and the Hemiphragma heterophyllum. The Holly 
Iler di ena) reaches a great size ; one, measured near the ground, 
Was between sixteen and seventeen feet in girth; but the characteristic 
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