CALCUTTA TO DARJEELING. - 367 
or any one comfort, I felt strangely alive to the truth of my childhood’s 
story-books, about the horrors of the Hartz forest, and of the benighted 
traveller’s situation therein. Cold sluggish beetles hung to the damp 
walls,—and these I ruthlessly bottled. After due exertions and perseve- 
rance with the damp wood, a fire smoked lustily, and, by cajoling the 
gnome of a house-keeper, I procured the usual roast fowl and potatos, 
with the accustomed sauce of a strong smoky and singed flavour. 
Pacheem stands at an elevation of some 8,000 feet, and as I walked 
out on the following morning I met subalpine plants in abundance, 
but was too early in the season to get aught but the foliage of the 
generality: Piddingtonia, Chrysosplenium, Viola (of a different species 
from that at Kursiong), Lobelia, a small Geranium, Fragaria, little Poly- 
gona, five or six Rudi, Arum, Paris, a delicate little Jsopyrum, Conval- 
laria, Uvularia, Disporum, Carex, creeping Urticee, and succulent great 
ones too, Arenaria (or Stellaria), Ainsliea, Rubia, Vaccinium, and 
j s æ, Caprifoli 
Hypericum, Hydrangea, Berberis, Lonicera, Artemisia, Urtica, 
cyanea, Viburnum, Sambucus, dwarf Bamboo, &c. 
The climbing plants were still Panax or Aralia, Kadsura, Saurauja, 
Hydrangea, Vitis, Smilax, Ampelopsis, Polygona, and, most beautiful of 
all, Stauntonia, with pendulous racemes of lilac blossoms. Epiphytes 
were rarer, still I found Celogyne, and several other genera of Orchidee, 
Vaccinia, and a most noble white Rhododendron, whose truly enormous 
and delicious Jemon-scented blossoms strewed the ground. The trees 
were one-half oaks, one-quarter Magnolia, nearly another quarter Lauri, 
with a scattering of birch, alder, maple, holly, Pruni, Pyri, Cerasus, 
Styrax, Symplocos, and Limonia. Neither Juglans, tree-ferns, nor Cas- 
tanea ascend so high; nor, of course, palms or bananas, Pothos or 
peppers. The rarity of Leguminosæ, I might say their total absence, 
was most remarkable, and must be a prominent feature in the vegetation 
of this region: it is too high for the tropical tribes of the warmer 
elevations, too low and too moist for the Galegee and Astragaleæ ; 
still why are there no Vicee, nor the pretty Parochætus I had left only 
1,000 feet below ? Except Zsopyrum, Ranunculacee were totally absent ; 
there may be a few species of Clematis, but I did not observe them, an 
they cannot be many; certainly no Ranunculus, that ubiquitous genus 
