194 Records of the Indian Museum. Vor. Ve 
fluviatile and lacustrine origin, often containing lakes and sur- 
rounded on all sides by mountains, prevail over this area and have 
been estimated to comprise one-fifteenth part of the province and 
to contain nearly half of the population. The general elevation 
of the plains may be taken as 5,500 feet with the mountain tops 
reaching another 3,000 or 4,000 feet above them. 
The climate of these regions is excellent. During the dry 
season which lasts from November to May, there is no great heat. 
In the winter months frost is common at night, but snow rarely 
falls and all through the day the weather is usually bright and 
pleasant. The general precipitation of the rainy season, which 
lasts from June to September, is high, though the actual rainfall 
varies much locally. Long intervals of fine weather are, however, 
frequent enough in the rains. The plains of the west are all 
intensely cultivated, highly organised systems of irrigation bring 
the water from the mountain sides on to the fields, and incident- 
ally prove a means of destruction of the young fish, which are 
swept down on to the fields and easily secured by the people. 
The principal crop is rice, which is reaped in October, after which 
the fields are planted again with the winter crops of poppy, 
wheat, beans and peas. Maize, hemp, sesamum and other oil 
producing seeds, tobacco, and in the warmer parts, sugar-cane and 
tea are also grown. Many of the mountain ranges have been 
denuded of all large trees, and are now covered with grass and 
bracken, forming admirable breeding grounds for pheasant, part- 
ridge and other game birds, though these are largely kept in check 
by foxes and various birds of prey. 
In the more isolated mountain districts, the slopes are covered 
with pine woods, and further southwards with trees of a more 
tropical kind. A recent writer has well remarked, ‘‘ To a traveller 
accustomed to the vast jungles of Burma, Yunnan would appear 
a bare country, but it would seem well wooded when compared to 
the barren hills of the north-west frontier of India.”’? 
Evergreen tropical forests exist in the extreme south-west, but 
further north along the frontier they give place to the evergreen 
temperate forests which characterise some parts of the Northern 
Shan States and of the Kachin Hills. In the extreme east of 
Yunnan and also in small isolated areas about the Burma-China 
frontier, limestone plateaux are found, which are dry and barren, 
owing to underground circulation of the water. 
The border between the hilly areas of Upper Burma and 
Yunnan is purely a political and administrative one, ethnographi- 
cally there is little difference between the indigenous tribes on 
either side, whilst the classical researches of Anderson have shown 
that the fauna is much the same. In the same way, north-western 
Yunnan belongs to the Tibetan region, and southern Yunnan has 
nothing to distinguish it geographically from those parts of the 
Southern Shan States and Upper Tongking which it adjoins. 
! See ‘‘ Yunnan, the link between India and the Yangtze,’’ by H. R. Davies, 
Dp: sles 
