88 DR. HOOKER’S MISSION TO INDIA. 
favourite fragrant oil, much used in domestic medicine all over India, 
being, I am told, of undeniable efficacy in curing rheumatisms. The 
trees are of the kind mentioned before, especially the Olibanum, Dios- 
pyros, and Terminalia. The latter (Vatica robusta) is rare, from being 
universally cut down. The curious Hymenodyction thyrsiflorum grows 
here, now a leafless tree, with seeds. A pretty summer-house, octa- 
gonal, and with a roof supported by pillars, occupies one of the highest 
parts of the plateau, which is called 1,485 feet above the Soane, and 
commands a superb view of the scenery before described. From this 
to the palace is a walk of two or three miles, through the woods. The 
buildings are very extensive, and though now ruinous, they bear evi- 
dence of great beauty in the architecture: high galleries, supported 
by slender columns, long cool arcades, screened squares and terraced 
walks, are the principal features. The rooms open out upon flat roofs, 
affording superb views of the long, endless table-land on one side, and 
a sheer precipice of 1,000 feet on the other, with the Soane, the 
amphitheatre of hills, and the village of Akbarpore.  . 
This and Bidjegurt, higher up the Soane, were among the last forts 
taken by the English, and this was also the last of those wrested 
from Baber in 1542. Some of the rooms are still habitable; but the 
greater part are ruinous, and covered with weeds and wild-flowers, 
and the naturalized garden-plants of the adjoining shrubberies, the 
Nyctanthes and Guettarda, with Vitex Negundo, Hibiscus Abelmoschus, 
Abutilon Indicum, Physalis, Justicia Adhatoda, and other Acanthacea, 
and above all, the little yellow-flowered Linaria ramosissima, crawling 
like the English Z. Cymbalaria, over every ruined wall, just as we 
see the walls of our old English castles, harbouring to the last stone 
the pants their old masters fostered. 
limestone walls several. species of crustaceous Lichens 
ENT In the old dark stables I observed that the soil was 
covered with a copious most evanescent efflorescence, like soap-suds 
scattered about; of which earth I send specimens, for the salt was so 
light, that it was impossible even to lift it 
I made Rotas palace to be 1,759 feet Pie the sea, or 1,100 feet 
above the village of Akbarpore; so that the table-land is here only 
fifty feet higher than that I had crossed on the grand trunk-road before 
descending at the Dunwah pass. Its mean temperature, Mr. Davis 
informs me, is about 10° below that of the valley below; but though 
