120 HISTORY ОҒ 
іп which it is found. Оп Sheopore, at ап elevation of about 10,000 feet (the only place 
where I have found it in Nepal Proper), it isa smaller, slenderer, and smoother plant 
with almost simple stem, narrow segments of the leaves, and thin racemes. As it 
approaches higher elevations, towards the snowy mountains, it attains a larger size and 
habit, and is covered with soft, greyish hairs, the divisions of the leaves become broader, 
the spikes larger, and the flowers more dense and numerous. These various appearances 
so gradually succeed each other that I am unable to discover any point on which to 
form a specific distinction; nor can I even sufficiently limit the varieties to render their 
enumeration a matter of utility." 
Consequently when he published his work from which this passage is taken, ke merged 
all these forms in his original Aconitum feroz, extending Séringe’s description so as 
to cover them, yet retaining the old type for the plate illustrating the species; but 
even here, as а consequence of Wallich’s overgeneralisation, an error seems to have 
slipped in, marring the otherwise faithful illustration; for I suspect that the root was 
added on, in good faith, from э bazaar specimen belonging to another species, very 
likely А. Balfourit, which is collected for trade. There is at least certainly no root with 
Wallich’s specimens from which the drawing could have been made. In fact the speci- 
men in Wallich’s own herbarium at the Linnean Society in London from which the 
inflorescence and the infructescence was probably drawn has no tubers apart from а 
detached fragment of an old mother-tuber, and the attached tubers in the herbaria at 
Geneva, Kew, and Copenhagen are quite different. The interest in the Bith question 
aroused through Hamilton's and Wallich's efforts to trace the sources of the poison had 
meanwhile spread to the “ North-Western ” Himalaya. I have already mentioned Blink- 
worth, who collected in Kumaon, and Dr. Govan, who travelled in Sirmore and in 
what is now-a-days Tihri-Garhwal; but the botanical centre for this region was Saha- 
ranpur and the leading spirit Dr. Royle, whose botanical knowledge and familiarity 
with the “Materia Medica” would seem to have made him particularly fit for investi- 
gations of this kind. He collected root-specimens from the bazaars of Northern India, . 
as far as Amritsar, herbarium specimens and notes on the article, and even succeeded 
іп introducing an Aconite from Choor.* Yet, his account of the Bikh plant in his Mus- 
trations of the Botany of the Himalayan Mountains, pp. 46—48, is somewhat disappointing. 
He accepted Wallich’s theory of the variability of A. feroz, and also referred the Bith 
от, as it was called, Metha Tellia of his district to the Nepalese А. feroz. This 
however, belonged undoubtedly to another species which I have named A. Fuleoneri. The 
combined authorities of Wallieh and Royle carried sufficient weight with them to secure 
the undisputed recognition of their theory that A. feroz was the source of Bikh, and it 
stood for a considerable time for any poisonous aconite found in India. Thus it came 
about, for instance, that the small Aconite roots which were brought in little wicker 
baskets from Assam to Calcutta, and which were possibly the tubers of A. lethale, were 
referred to А. feroz by O'Shaughnessey (Beng. Pharmacop, 1844, D. lUi] и waa alas 
the Mohra of Madden (Diary of an Excursion to the Shatool and Boorun Passes on the 
Himalaya in Journ. Au. Soc, Bengal, xv., 1840, p. 95), which was no doubt A, deinor- 
rhizum. 
U When in 1848 and 1849 J. H. Hooker explored Sikkim, another part of the 
Himalaya, from whieh “bikh ” had been obtained, was opened. бо keen an observer 
could not overlook the considerable diversity which the genus Aconite displays in 
Sikkim, nor the importance attaching to the poisons derived from some of its species, 
* A mountain reaching over 12,000 ft. in Sirmor (Simla Hill States), 
