30 CO&MOS. 



al regions are to be found even on the highest plateaux of the 

 mountains. On the slope of the Himalaya, under the shade 

 of the Deodora and the broad-leaved oak, peculiar to these 

 Indian Alps, the rocks of granite and of mica schist are cov- 

 ered with vegetable forms almost similar to those which char- 

 acterize Europe and Northern Asia. The species are not 

 identical, but closely analogous in aspect and physiognomy, as, 

 for instance, the juniper, the alpine birch, the gentian, the 

 marsh parnassia, and the prickly species of Ribes.* The 

 chain of the Himalaya is also wanting in the imposing phe- 

 nomena of volcanoes, which in the Andes and in the Indian 

 Archipelago often reveal to the inhabitants, under the most 

 terrific forms, the existence of the forces pervading the inte- 

 rior of our planet. 



Moreover, on the southern declivity of the Himalaya, where 

 the ascending current deposits the exhalations rising from a 

 vigorous Indian vegetation, the region of perpetual snow be- 

 gins at an elevation of 11,000 or 12,000 feet above the level 

 of the sea,t thus setting a limit to the development of organic 



** Ribes iiubicola, R. glaciale, R. grossularia. The species which 

 compose the vegetation of the Himalaya are four pines, notwithstanding 

 the assertion of the ancients regarding Eastern Asia (Strabo, lib. 11, p. 

 510, Cas.), twenly-five oaks, four birches, two chestnuts, seven maples, 

 twelve willows, fourteen roses, three species of strawberry, seven spe- 

 cies of Alpine roses (rhododendra), one of which attains a height of 20 

 feet, and many other northern genera. Large white apes, having black 

 faces, inhabit the wild chestnut-tree of Kashmir, which grows to a height 

 of 100 feet, in lat. 33° (see Carl von HUgel's Kasckmir, 1840, 2d pt. 

 249). Among the Coniferae, we find the Pinus deodwara, or deodara 

 (in Sanscrit, dewa-dar^i, the timber of the gods), which is nearly allied 

 to Pinus cedrus. Near the limit of perpetual snow flourish the large 

 and showy flowers of the Gentiana venusta, G. Moorcroftiaua, Swertia 

 purpurescens, S. speciosa, Parnassia armata, P. nubicola, Poeonia Emo- 

 di, Tulipa stellata; and, besides varieties of European genera peculiar 

 to these Indian mountains, true European species, as Leontodon tarax- 

 acum, Prunella vulgaris, Galium aparine, and Thlaspi arvense. The 

 heath mentioned by §aunders, in Turner's Travels, and which had been 

 confounded with Calluna vulgaris, is an Andromeda, a fact of the great- 

 est importance in the geography of Asiatic plants. If I have made use, 

 in this work, of the uuphilosophical expressions of Ejiropean genera, 

 European species, growing wild in Asia, &c., it has been in consequence 

 of the old botanical language, which, instead of the idea of a large dis- 

 semination, or, rather, of the coexistence of organic productions, has 

 dogmatically substituted the false hypothesis of a migration, which, 

 fi'om predilection*for Europe, is further assumed to have been from west 

 to east, 



t On the southern declivity of the Himalaya, the limit of perpetual 

 Buow is 12,978 feet above the level of the sea; on the northern decliv- 

 ity, or, rather, on the peaks which rise above the Thibet, or Tartarian 



