258 TO -DAKJILING : FIKST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY 



a pile six feet high in the drying papers. ' If I can only suc- 

 ceed/ he cries, ' in getting these glorious things to Kew, how 

 happy I shall be/ 



As to the^distribution of plants, these Himalayan valleys 

 presented a striking parallel to the Antarctic. In the humid 

 and equable climate of the latter, botanical orders which only 

 reached lat. 30 or 40 in the northern hemisphere, reached 

 Tasmania and New Zealand and even Cape Horn in 55 S. 

 So in Sikkim, where it was not dry enough for the Skimmia 

 in its native home to ripen the scarlet berries which light up our 

 English gardens, some tropical genera pushed abundantly into 

 the temperate zone, fostered by the damp and equable climate. 



The general features of Himalayan botany he sums up 

 as follows (May 18, 1848) : 



In travelling N. you come upon genus replacing genus, 

 Natural Order replacing Natural Order. In travelling E. 

 or W. (i.e. N.W. or S.E. along the ridges) you find species 

 replacing species, and this whether of animals or plants. 

 Don't forget to send this to Darwin. 



On July 24 (the extracts being given in brackets) and 

 August 9 he writes : 



The rapidity with which the flowering season is advancing 

 is quite wonderful, and I have accordingly doubled my estab- 

 lishment of collectors. I pay very liberally, often for trash, 

 and they all like to bring me things. They are capricious and 

 apt to run away if offended, but mine like me and I them, 

 and such fellows will do anything for a master. I have 

 always a horde of them in pay, at 8s. to 16s. a month. I 

 have 18 at this present moment, for the plants are flowering 

 and dying so rapidly that it takes all my energy to keep a good 

 collection up. The papers too have all to be changed daily 

 and dried individually over the fire the rooms are so damp 

 that hanging up to dry is no use. Everything moulds which 

 is not kept at the fire. All my plants are on a circle of chairs 

 immediately round the fender, inside which two Lepchas 

 squat and dry papers all day long, in two rooms. [I am 

 dreadfully badly off for paper, having used all that Falconer 

 sent me up and all the newspapers (do you remember the 



