352 Major Madden vn the Occurrence of Palms, ^r., 



happen that some of these should be overthrown and buried be- 

 neath the huge landslips so prevalent at such crises, and there 

 become fossilized to the perplexity of a succeeding race of geo- 

 logists ! Their difficulties and their errors might easily be en- 

 hanced and fortified by the addition of a very possible contin- 

 gency in the animal kingdom, viz. the presence of the larger 

 carnivora. The leopard is a constant and only too troublesome 

 inhabitant of the Himalaya up at least to 9000 feet, and com- 

 mits great depredations on the flocks. The tiger, too nume- 

 rous at the base, and in the hot valleys of the Kemaon and 

 Gurhwal mountains, is, I think, merely an occasional, though 

 by no means very rare, visitor at that altitude in search of the 

 larger deer ; I have myself several times seen their footprints on 

 the snow, with other marks of their having passed between 8000 

 and 9000 feet ; at which elevation one friend of mine met a tiger 

 in a thicket of Deo Ningala ; and another wlio was on a shooting 

 excursion fired at and wounded one up as high as 10,000 feet. 

 Now, it is not at all impossible that one or more of these should 

 perish in a storm and be buried in the same deposit as the palms 

 and conifers, &c., and thus render the problem greatly more 

 complicated. 



So much for the mountains and the subtropical forms which 

 flourish there; but the same i-esult will be equally brought 

 about in the hot plains of India by the transport of the northern 

 plants through the agency of rivers and torrents. The Khasya 

 hills, where Griffith first met the Chamarops, rise like a wall from 

 the flats of Bengal, and in many parts of the Himalaya the ex- 

 terior range rises in precipices to the height of 6000 to 8000 feet, 

 clothed to the brink with oak, ash, maple, pine, cypress, Siberian 

 crab, &c. : immediately beneath is the vegetation of the tropics. 

 The cliff's are wearing slowly back, and many of these oaks, &c. 

 must be carried down by their own weight and by the torrents 

 to form the most heterogeneous mass with the Naucleas, Cin- 

 chonas, Vaticas, of the l^erai Belt. 



These reflections are forced on the mind at once in such loca- 

 lies as Nynee Tal Station in Kemaon. 



But we may safely extend our view to the lower course and 

 deltas of the three great rivers which ultimately drain the Hima- 

 laya, the Indus, the Ganges, and the Burhampootra. Mooltan 

 and Sindh, on the first of these, are in many places covered with 

 groves of Phoenix dactylifera and a forked palm, which I sup- 

 pose to be Hyjihane Thehaica, the Doom palm of Upper Egypt : 

 Bchar on the Ganges, in like manner, abounds in the fine palm 

 Borassus flahelliformis ; and in Bengal, Phoenix sylvestris and^ja/w- 

 dosa, Areca Catechu, and Cocos nucifera, often form great woods. 

 Annually, duiing the floods, the great rivers bring down num- 



