90 PALUNG. Chap. XXI. 



A few days afterwards, I again visited Palimg, with 

 the view of ascertaining the height of perpetual snow on 

 the south face of Kinchinjhow ; unfortunately, bad weather 

 came on before I reached the Tibetans, from whom I 

 obtained a guide in consequence. From this place a 

 ride of about four miles brought me to the source of the 

 Chachoo, in a deep ravine, containing the terminations of 

 several short, abrupt glaciers,* and into which were pre- 

 cipitated avalanches of snow and ice. I found it impossible 

 to distinguish the glacial ice from perpetual snow ; the 

 larger beds of snow where presenting a flat surface, being 

 generally drifts collected in hollows, or accumulations that 

 have fallen from above : when these accumulations rest on 

 slopes they become converted into ice, and, obeying the 

 laws of fluidity, flow downwards as glaciers. I boiled 

 water at the most advantageous position I could select, and 

 obtained an elevation of 16,522 feet.f It was snowing 

 heavily at this time, and we crouched under a gigantic 



elevation between 16,000 and 18,000 feet. In Sikkim it is found at the same 

 level. Specimens of it are exhibited in the Kew Museum. As one instance 

 illustrative of the chaotic state of Indian botany, I may here mention that this 

 little plant, a denizen of such remote and inaccessible parts of the globe, and 

 which has only been known to science a dozen years, bears the burthen of no less 

 than six names in botanical works. This is the Bryomorpha rupifraga of Karelin 

 and Kireloff (enumeration of Sbongarian plants), who first described it from 

 specimens gathered in 1841, on the Alatau mountains (east of Lake Aral). In 

 Ledebour's "Flora Rossica" (i. p. 780) it appeal's as A renaria (sub-genus Dicranilla) 

 rupifraga, Fenzl, MS. In Decaisne and Cambessede's Plants of Jacquemont's 

 " Voyage aux Indes Orientales," it is described as Flourensia cce-pitosa, and in the 

 plates of that work it appears as Peviandra cvespitosa ; and lastly, in Endlicher's 

 " Genera Plantarum," Fenzl proposes the long new generic name of Thylacospermum 

 for it. I have carefully compared the Himalayan and Alatau plants, and find no 

 difference between them, except that the flower of the Himalayan one has 4 petals 

 and sepals, 8 stamens, and 2 styles, and that of the Alatau 5 petals and sepals, 10 

 stamens, and 2 — 3 styles, characters which are very variable in allied plants. 

 The flowers appear polygamous, as in the Scotch alpine Cherleria, which it much 

 resembles in habit, and to which it is very nearly related in botanical characters. 



* De Saussure's glaciers of the second order : see " Forbes' Travels in the 

 Alps," p. 79. 



+ Temperature of boiling water, 183°, air 35°. 



