Feb. 1849. SILIGOREE BUNGALOW. 375 



sun rose through a murky yellowish atmosphere with ill- 

 defined orb. Thick clouds of smoke pressed upon the 

 plains, and the faint easterly wind wafted large flakes of 

 grass charcoal sluggishly through the air. 



Vegetation was in great beauty, though past its winter 

 prime. The tropical forest of India has two flowering 

 seasons ; one in summer, of the majority of plants ; and 

 the other in winter, of Acantliacece, Bauhinia, Dillenia, 

 Bombax, &c. Of these the former are abundant, and 

 render the jungle gay with large and delicate white, red, 

 and purple blossoms. Coarse, ill-favoured vultures wheeled 

 through the air, languid Bengalees had replaced the active 

 mountaineers, jackal-like curs of low degree teemed at 

 every village, and ran howling away from the onslaught of 

 my mountain dog ; and the tropics, with all their beauty 

 of flower and genial warmth, looked as forbidding and 

 unwholesome as they felt oppressive to a frame that had so 

 long breathed the fresh mountain air. 



Mounted on a stout pony, I enjoyed my scamper of 

 sixteen miles over the wooded plains and undulating 

 gravelly slopes of the Terai, intervening between the foot 

 of the mountains and Siligoree bungalow, where I rested 

 for an hour. In the afternoon I rode on leisurely to Titalya, 

 sixteen miles further, along the banks of the Mahanuddy, 

 the atmosphere being so densely hazy, that objects a few 

 miles off were invisible, and the sun quite concealed, 

 though its light was so powerful that no part of the sky 

 could be steadily gazed upon. This state of the air is very 

 curious, and has met with various attempts at explanation,* 



* Dr. M'Lelland (" Calcutta Journal of Natural History," vol. i., p. 52), attributes 

 the haze of the atmosphere during the north-west winds of this season, wholly to 

 suspended earthy particles. But the haze is present even in the calmest weather, 

 and extreme dryness is in all parts of the world usually accompanied by an obscure 

 horizon. Captain Campbell (" Calcutta Journal of Natural History," vol. ii., p. 44. ) 



