336 SILHET. Chap. XXXI. 



by fine spreading oaks,* Garcinia, and Diospyros trees. 

 The rock of which the hill is composed, is a slag-like 

 ochreous sandstone, covered in most places with a shrub- 

 bery of rose-flowered Melastoma, and some peculiar 

 plants, f 



Broad flat valleys divide the hills, and are beautifully 

 clothed with a bright green jungle of small palms, and many 

 kinds of ferns. In sandy places, blue-flowered Burmannia, 

 Hypoxis, and other pretty tropical annuals, expand their 

 blossoms, with an inconspicuous Stylidium, a plant 

 belonging to a small natural family, whose limits are 

 so confined to New Holland, that this is almost the 

 only kind that does not grow in that continent. Where 

 the ground is sw T ampy, dwarf Pandanus abounds, with the 

 gigantic nettle, Urtica crenulata ("Mealum-ma" of Sikkim, 

 see p. 189). 



The most interesting botanical ramble about Silhet is 

 to the tree-fern groves on the path to Jynteapore, following 

 the bottoms of shallow valleys between the Teelas, and along 

 clear streams, up whose beds we waded for some miles, 

 under an arching canopy of tropical shrubs, trees, and 

 climbers, tall grasses, screw-pines, and Aroidece. In the 

 narrower parts of the valleys the tree-ferns are numerous 

 on the slopes, rearing their slender brown trunks forty feet 



* It is not generally known that oaks are often very tropical plants ; not only 

 abounding at low elevations in the mountains, but descending in abundance to the 

 level of the sea. Though unknown in Ceylon, the Peninsula of India, tropical 

 Africa, or South America, they abound in the hot valleys of the Eastern Himalaya, 

 East Bengal, Malay Peninsula, and Indian islands ; where perhaps more species 

 grow than in any other part of the world. Such facts as this disturb our precon- 

 ceived notions of the geographical distribution of the most familiar tribes of plants, 

 and throw great doubt on the conclusions which fossil plants are supposed to 

 indicate. 



t Gelonium, Adelia, Moacurra, Linostoma, Justicia, Trophis, Connarus, Ixora, 

 Congea, Dalhousica, Greioia, Myrsine, Bilttneria ; and on the shady exposures 

 a Calamus, Briedelia, and various ferns. 



