May, 1849. VEGETATION AND GEOLOGY OF CHAKOONG. 19 



that sting like poisoned arrows. The wild English straw- 

 berry is common, but bears a tasteless fruit : its inferiority 

 is however counterbalanced by the abundance of a grateful 

 yellow raspberry. Parasitical Orchids {Bendrobium nobile, 

 and densiflorum, &c), cover the trunks of oaks, while Tha- 

 lictrum and Geranium grow under their shade. Monotropa 

 and Balanophora, both parasites on the roots of trees (the 

 one a native of north Europe and the other of a tropical 

 climate), push their leafless stems and heads of flowers 

 through the soil together : and lastly, tree-ferns grow asso- 

 ciated with the Pteris aquilina (brake) and Lycopodium 

 clavatmn of our British moors • and amongst mosses, the 

 superb Himalayan Lyellia crispa* with the English Funaria 

 hyyrometrica. 



The dense jungles of Chakoong completely cover the 

 beautiful flat terraces of stratified sand and gravel, which 

 rise in three shelves to 150 feet above the river, and whose 

 edges appear as sharply cut as if the latter had but lately 

 retired from them. They are continuous with a line of 

 quartzy cliffs, covered with scarlet rhododendrons, and in 

 the holes of which a conglomerate of pebbles is found, 150 

 feet above the river. Everywhere immense boulders are 

 scattered about, some of which are sixty yards long : their 

 surfaces are water-worn into hollows, proving the river to 

 have cut through nearly 300 feet of deposit, which once 

 floored its valley. Lower down the valley, and fully 

 2000 feet above the river, I had passed numerous 

 angular blocks resting on gentle slopes where no land- 

 slips could possibly have deposited them j and which I 

 therefore refer to ancient glacial action : one of these, 



* This is one of the most remarkable mosses in the Himalaya mountains, and 

 derives additional interest from having been named after the late Charles Lyell, 

 Esq., of Kinnordy, the father of the most eminent geologist of the present day. 



c a 



