CHAPTER VIII 



FORESTS AND RANGES OF THE MIDDLE ZONE 



On the vast ridges of elevated mountain masses which 

 constitute the Himalayas are found different regions of 

 distinct character. The loftiest peaks of the snowy range 

 abutting on the great plateaux of Central Asia and Tibet 

 run like a great belt across the globe, falling towards the 

 south-west to the plains of India. Between the summit 

 and the plains, a distance of fifty to seventy miles, there 

 are higher, middle, and lower ranges, so cut up by deep 

 and winding valleys and river-courses that no labyrinth 

 could be found more confusing or difficult to unravel. 

 There is nowhere any tableland, as at the Cape or in 

 Colorado, with horizontal strata of rock cut down by 

 water into valleys or canons. The strata seem, on the 

 contrary, to have been shoved up and crumpled in all 

 directions by some powerful shrinkage of the earth's 

 crust, due perhaps to cooling ; and the result is such a 

 jumble of contorted rock masses, that it looks as if some 

 great castle had been blown up by dynamite and its walls 

 hurled in aU directions. The great central masses, how- 

 ever, consist generally of crystalline granite, gneiss, and 

 quartz rock, protruding from the bowels of the earth and 

 shoving up the stratified envelope of rocks nearly six 

 miles above sea level. Six miles is not a very great 

 rugosity on a globe of the size of the world, but it amounts 



