CALCUTTA TO DARJEELING. 863 
amongst which Darjeeling is placed, still twenty-five miles off. A 
little below this a great change had taken place in the vegetation,— 
marked, first, by the appearance of a very English-looking bramble, 
which, however, by way of proving its foreign origin, bore a yellow 
fruit, called here the “ yellow raspberry :” the berry is very good. 
Scattered oaks, of a noble species, with large lamellated cups and 
magnificent foliage, succeeded ; and along the ridge of the mountain to 
Kursiong (a Dawk bungalow at about 4,000 feet), the change in the 
flora was complete. I here entered on the early spring flora of the 
middle region of the Himalaya, which extends upwards to the Alpine 
(at 10,000). Fancy me now going north, on a long spur or shoulder 
of a mountain, which rises, still forest-clad, 4,000 feet higher in front ; 
n either side is a deep, broad valley, running up from the plains: I 
e: left behind me all that is tropical and Indian, and am amongst 
those temperate natural orders, many of which prevail from hence to 
the arctic circle, their continuity interrupted only by the deep, narrow 
gullies which worm their way and carry their tropical vegetation 
almost up to the snow, or by that chain of peaks still further on, whose 
height is above that to which vegetable life ascends. 
The spring of this region and elevation most vividly recalled that of 
England. The Oak flowering, the Birch leafing, the Violet, Chryso- 
splenium, Stellaria and Arum, Vaccinium, wild strawberry, maple, 
Mimulus? Geranium, Bramble. A colder wind blew here: mosses and 
ichens carpeted the banks and roadsides: the birds and insects were 
very different from those below ; and everything proclaimed the marked 
change in elevation, and not only in this, but in season, for I had left 
the winter of the tropics and here encountered the spring of the 
temperate zone. 
So many tropical genera ascend thus high, and 2,000 feet more, that 
I think the change caused by the relative difference in the season was 
more marked than that due to elevation ; but when the line drawn by 
both is clear, it becomes hard to judge. Thus, the spring flowers I men- 
tioned are so notoriously the harbingers of a European spring, that 
their e carries you home at once; but, as species, they differ from 
their Tupas prototypes, and are accompanied at this elevation (and 
for 2,000 feet up) with Pothos, Bananas, Palms, Figs, Pepper, numbers 
of epiphytal Orchideæ, and such genuine tropical genera. The uniform 
temperature and humidity of the region here favour the growth of 
3A 
