88 VEGETATION. 



spikes of yellow flowers formally arranged in seven or eight vertical 

 rows. All the family, but especially the two above-named species, 

 are a great attraction to the Sphinx moths which visit them freely 

 after dusk. A Curcuma, which sends up flower spikes with bright pink- 

 coloured bracts in spring, is a striking and abundant plant on dry 

 ridges below 4,000 feet. There are five species of wild plantains, 

 all very common ; but their fruits are of but little economic value, 

 being a mass of black seeds embedded in a little sweet pulp and 

 enclosed in a skin. One of the species, in the young stage, has, 

 occasionally, prettily variegated leaves. 



The Arum family is also an important one in Sikhim, and one 

 of its members, the gigantic Pothos, perhaps the noblest of all 

 climbers, is among the most prominent objects of the cool forests 

 where it clothes the huge trunks of trees with its handsome foliage. 

 Fortunately for the lover of the beautiful, its leaves are uneatable by 

 cattle, and it is thus enabled to develop its full beauty; but a smaller- 

 leaved sort, associated with it, is periodically denuded of its leaves 

 for cattle fodder, and its use is said to cause a considerable increase 

 in the yield of milk, and to rapidly bring calves into good condition. 

 The leaf stalks of a wild Caladium are largely used, in a cooked state, 

 for feeding pigs; and ten or a dozen sorts are cultivated for their 

 tubers as ordinary articles of food. The roots of several Arisoemas 

 of the high levels are eaten by the poorer inhabitants of those infer- 

 tile parts after they have been fermented for some days, and then 

 boiled to ensure the dissipation of their poisonous matter. But at the 

 best they are unwholesome food, and Hooker remarks that they 

 cause bowel-complaints and loss of hair and skin. A few of tbem have 

 elegant foliage and strange looking flowers with tendrils, of half a 

 yard in length, from the tops of the spadices ; and in autumn and winter 

 they brighten up the roadsides with their large buuches of shining red 

 fruit, which are greedily eaten by the Crimson Tragopan pheasant. 

 The flower of an Amorphophallus which grows below 4,000 feet, and 

 flowers at the beginning of the rainy season, has a disgusting and far- 

 reaching odour of carrion. 



The palms are but sparingly represented, and that mostly by the 

 rattans. One of them. Calamus monfaiius, was formerly much used as 

 suspending ropes of the foot-bridges across the large rivers, for which 

 it was admirably adapted on account of its lightness, great length, 

 and enormous strength, but owing to the spread of cultivation it is 

 now scarce. From Calamus inermis are got the best alpenstocks of the 

 district, and C. leptospadix is a favourite plant with palm cultivators 

 on account of its light feathery foliage, which is very elegant. Plecio- 

 comia himalayana^ another rattan, ascends to 6,500 feet, often forming 

 impenetrable thickets in the forests. By means of its strongly incurved 



