350 Major Madden on the Occurrence of Palms, i^c, 



and, with the second and third species, occupying nearly the entire 

 zone of all the coniferous trees of the Himalaya, Pinus lonrjifolia 

 excepted, which is below them*. The most useful and re- 

 markable of the four is Arundinaria utilis, which grows in fine 

 clumps of many slender stems, from 20 to 40 feet high, ex- 

 tremely durable and applied to a great variety of purposes. The 

 plant, like the true bambu, flowers but rarely, and the stems 

 then die and fall. I was fortunate enough to collect considerable 

 quantities of the seed near Pindree in 1 846, which has, I believe, 

 produced all the plants living in Great Britain and Ireland : 

 three years afterwards, in a second visit to the alpine Himalaya, 

 the stems which had fallen and died in that season were still 

 perfectly sound, and I believe that the third and fourth species 

 are nearly if not altogether as durable, but they never attain the 

 stature of the Deo Ningala. 



The bearing of the foregoing facts on the phsenomena of geo- 

 logy is so obvious as to require little comment ; the considera- 

 tions most pressing on om* attention being the necessity of great 

 caution in drawing inferences as to the nature of climate from 

 the presence of supposed tropical forms in ancient rock forma- 

 tions, and the facility with which we can now account for the 

 juxtaposition of those forms with those of known temperate 

 regions. 



Here are palms, bambus, bananas growing amongst and above 

 pines, firs, cedars, cypresses, yews, oakst, maples, hazels, ash, 



* " Bamboos in the general acceptation of tbe term (for remotely allied 

 genera bear tbe same trivial English name) occur at all elevations below 

 12,000 feet, forming even in the pine woods, and above their zone, in the 

 skirts of the Rhododendron scrub, a small, and sometimes almost imper- 

 vious jungle." (Dr. J. D. Hooker, Excursion to Tonglo Mountain in Sik- 

 kim : Journal As. Soc. Bengal, May 1849, p. 424.) 



t It must be remarked, however, that the oak, the i)ine, and other 

 common Northern forms are even less justly adduced as the criteria of a 

 cold climate than the palms are of a hot one. Our own Quercus robur, 

 the Himalayan Q. semecarpifolia, with several Mexican and other species, 

 flourish exclusively in low temperatures, but the great majority of the 

 Indian species are natives of the moist warm regions of Nepal, Silhet, the 

 Grarrow and Khasya hills, Chittagong, Tenasserim, Martaban, Penang, &c. 

 Such are sixteen out of the seventeen species enumerated by Roxburgh 

 in the ' Flora Indica.' Professor Liebmann remarks (Oak- Vegetation of 

 America, translated in Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew Miscellany for 

 1852, p. 322) : " It has hitherto been a prevailing notion that the oak -form 

 is peculiarly characteristic of the temjjerate zone. But whether we look at 

 the number of sjjecics, the beauty of the forms, or the size of particular 

 organs (leaves, fruits, cu])s), we shall find tlieir maximum in the tropical 

 zone, that is, in the Sunda Islands of the Old World and tropical Mexico 

 of the New." So also in the Himalaya, Ulvms erosa occurs at from 8000 

 to 10,000 feet; another species, erroneously as I think identified with the 

 Chinese Ulmus virgata, between (JOOO and 7000 feet ; a third in the hot 



