THE SAL FOEESTS 299 



bubble up, clothing the country with belts of perpetual 

 verdure, and conferring on it an aspect of freshness very- 

 remarkable in a country of such comparatively small 

 elevation in the centre of India. Everything combines to 

 deprive this region of the sterile and inhospitable appear- 

 ance worn by even most upland tracts during the hot 

 season. The sal tree is almost the only evergreen forest 

 tree in India. Throughout the summer its glossy dark- 

 green fohage reflects the hght in a thousand vivid tints; 

 and just when aU other vegetation is at its worst, a few 

 weeks before the gates of heaven are opened in the annual 

 monsoon, the sal selects its opportunity of bursting into 

 a fresh garment of the brightest and softest green. The 

 traveller who has lingered till that late period in these 

 wilds is charmed by the approach of a second spring, and 

 it requires no sUght effort to beheve himself still in a tropi- 

 cal country. The atmosphere has been kept humid by 

 the moisture from the broad sheets of water retained by the 

 upland streams, which descends nightly in dews on the 

 open valleys. The old grasses of the prairie have been 

 burnt in the annual conflagrations, and a covering of young 

 verdure has taken their place. Now and then the famihar 

 note of the cuckoo ^ (identical with the European bird), 

 and the voices of many birds, including the deep musical 

 coo of the grand imperial pigeon, heighten the delusion. 

 But for the bamboo thickets on the higher hills, whose 

 light feathery fohage beautifully supplements the heavier 

 masses of the sal that chng to their skirts, the scene would 

 present nothing pecuhar to the landscape of a tropical 

 country. 



The climate of these uplands is very temperate for this 

 part of India, showing a mean of about 77 degrees of the 

 thermometer during the hot season. The variation be- 

 tween the temperature of day and night is, however, 

 considerable, ranging from about 50 degrees to 100 degrees 

 as extremes during the hot season under canvas. It would 

 of course be much more equable in a house, and the range 

 is also far less on the higher plateaux than in the lower 

 valleys. In the cold season (which corresponds to our 

 ^ Cuculus canorus. 



