June, 1850. FOREST-TREES, PALMS, &c. 267 



thousand tons being annually shipped for Calcutta and 

 Dacca. It is succeeded by a horizontally stratified sand- 

 stone, which is continued up to 4000 feet, where it is over- 

 lain by coal-beds and then by limestone again. 



The sub-tropical scenery of the lower and outer Sikkim 

 Himalaya, though on a much more gigantic scale, is 

 not comparable in beauty and luxuriance with the really 

 tropical vegetation induced by the hot, damp, and insular 

 climate of these perennially humid mountains. At the 

 Himalaya forests of gigantic trees, many of them deciduous, 

 appear from a distance as masses of dark gray foliage, 

 clothing mountains 10,000 feet high : here the individual 

 trees are smaller, more varied in kind, of a brilliant green, 

 and contrast with gray limestone and red sandstone rocks 

 and silvery cataracts. Palms are more numerous here ; * 

 the cultivated Areca (betel-nut) especially, raising its graceful 

 stem and feathery crown, " like an arrow shot down from 

 heaven," in luxuriance and beauty above the verdant slopes. 

 This difference is at once expressed to the Indian botanist 

 by defining the Khasia flora as of Malayan character • 

 by which is meant the prevalence of brilliant glossy-leaved 

 evergreen tribes of trees (as JEupltorbiacece and Urticece), 

 especially figs, which abound in the hot gulleys, where the 

 property of their roots, which inosculate and form natural 

 grafts, is taken advantage of in bridging streams, and in 

 constructing what are called living bridges, of the most 

 picturesque forms. Combretacece, oaks, oranges, Garcinia 

 (gamboge), Diospgros, figs, Jacks, plantains, and Pandanus, 

 are more frequent here, together with pinnated leaved 

 Leguminosce, Meliacece, vines and peppers, and above all 



* There are upwards of twenty kinds of Palm in this district, including 

 Chamcerops, three species of Areca, two of Wallichia, Amiga, Caryota, three of 

 Phoenix, Plectocomia, Licuala, and many species of Calamus. Besides these there 

 are several kinds of Pandanus, and the Cycas pectinata. 



