8 COSMOS. 



of the Himalaya. But although the mountains of India greatly 

 surpass the Cordilleras of South America, by their astonishing 

 elevation, (which after being long contested has at last been 

 confirmed by accurate measurements,) they cannot, from their 

 geographical position, present the same inexhaustible variety 

 of phenomena by which the latter are characterised. The 

 impression produced by the grander aspects of nature does 

 not depend exclusively on height. The chain of the Himalaya 

 is placed far beyond the limits of the torrid zone, and scarcely 

 is a solitary palm-tree to be found in the beautiful valleys 

 of Kumaoun and Garhwal.* On the southern slope of the 

 ancient Paropamisus, in the latitudes of 28 and 34, nature 

 no longer displays the same abundance of tree-ferns, and 

 Arborescent grasses, heliconias and orchideous plants, which 

 in tropical 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 

 covered with vegetable forms, almost similar to those which 

 characterise 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.f The 



* The absence of palms and tree-ferns on the temperate slopes of the 

 Himalaya is shown in Don's Flora Nepalensis, 1825, and in the remark- 

 able series of lithographs of Wallich's Flora Indica, whose catalogue 

 contains the enormous number of 7,683 Himalaya species, almost all 

 phanerogamic plants, which have as yet been but imperfectly .classified. 

 In Nepaul (lat. 26^ to 27) there has hitherto been observed only one 

 species of palm, Chameerops martiana, Wall. (Plantce Asiat., lib. Hi., pp.5, 

 211), which is found at the height of 5,250 English feet above the level 

 of the sea, in the shady valley of Bunipa. The magnificent tree-fern, 

 Alsophila brunoniana, Wall, (of which a stem 48 feet long has been in the 

 possession of the British Museum since 1831) does not grow in Nepaul, 

 but is found on the mountains of Silhet, to the north-west of Calcutta, 

 in lat. 24 50'. The Nepaul fern, Paranema cyathoides, Don, formerly 

 known as Sphseropterabarbata, Wall. (Plantce. Asiat., lib. i., pp. 42,48) is, 

 indeed, nearly related to Cyathea, a species of which I have seen in 

 the South American Missions of Caripe, measuring: 33 feet in height ; this 

 is not, however, properly speaking, a tree. 



f Ribes nubicola, R. glaciale, R. grossularia. The species which 

 compose the vegetation of the Himalaya are four pines, notwithstanding 

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



