382 OCCASIONAL NOTES FROM SIKHIM.— NO. I. 



them in the young state require shelter and shade, while 

 the smaller growing plants, as a rule, only require their 

 bigger neighbours to be cleared away to enable them to 

 spread in every direction to the complete suppression of 

 the giants' progeny. Take for instance the grass known 

 among planters as Seeroo or Ooloo (Saccharum spontaneum ?) 

 In a virgin forest it is one of the rarest plants, but clear away 

 the trees and keep their seedlings down for a year or two by 

 fire and cattle, and the grass will spring up as if by spontaneous 

 generation — which appears to be believed in by several of 

 the would-be, wise and scientific advisers of Tea planters — to 

 the exclusion ever after of almost every thing else. Mauy small 

 plauts that are now quite common were extremely rare twelve 

 years ago. I remember finding my first plant of the elegant 

 Davallia tenuifolia, and for years rarely saw another, but now 

 it is abundant along the sides of the Cinchona roads. A visitor 

 to Darjeeling cannot fail to observe the beautiful, large masses 

 of the European Club-moss (Lycopodium clavalum) along the 

 steep banks of the cart road ; but let him walk into the forest 

 beyond the opening made for the road, and he will find how 

 rare a plant it naturally is : and many other plants the same. 



These changes in the distribution of plants take place so gra- 

 dually that people constantly living in the place are apt to 

 overlook them. As regards insects, there may still be as 

 many species of moths and butterflies as formerly, but the de- 

 crease in the number of individuals, even in my short time, is 

 remarkable. Hooker, in writing of them, says : (c They sat by 

 thousands — such an entomological display cannot be surpas- 

 sed." There is now nothing to equal this description, and 

 Hooker always rather under than over estimates. Snakes, on 

 the other hand, are getting more abundant year by year, but 

 their greatest enemy, the land crab, is scarcer, which may ac- 

 count for the increase. Crabs do not thrive in the grassy jungles 

 which have taken the place of the forest trees, but snakes do, 

 the latter thus gaining a double chance of multiplying. 



It is amusing to watch a crab trying to draw a snake that has 

 partly got into its hole. He catches it by one "hand" quite 

 close to the hole and holds it tight till it yields a little, when he 

 clutches it in front with the other, and so on, till the snake 

 either yields altogether or breaks. Usually the crab has to be 

 satisfied with the tail-end on which he makes a hearty meal, 

 tearing it in pieces and handing the morsels into its out-of-the- 

 way mouth in a very ludicrous manner. Those with an un- 

 fortunate — for themselves — prejudice against snakes may think 

 that snake-killing is the particular mission of the crab to the 

 warmer slopes of the Himalayas ; but I hope, and believe, that 



