184 9. J excursion from Darjiling to Tonglo. 431 



is a beautiful epiphytical species, growing on the larger oak limbs, and 

 bears clusters of 6 — 8 flowers of greater dimensions than any known 

 species ; these are pure white and deliriously scented of lemon. This 

 Magnolia forms a large tree very densely foliaged, the leaves a deep 

 shining green. Most of the flowers drop unexpanded from the tree, 

 and have a very sweet aromatic smell ; they are as large as the human fist, 

 the outer sepals purple, the inner pure white. Ovaria collected into an 

 ovate, acute, very short, dense head. It may be the Liriodendron 

 litifera, Wild. (Rox. 2, p. 654). The fruit differs from either Mag- 

 nolia or Michelia, and I need not say equally so from Liriodendron, 

 In every flower I picked up, there was either a coleopterous grub, 

 or lamellicorn beetle, in the centre of the receptacle. 



Heavy rain came on at 3 p. m. obliging us to take insufficient shelter 



under the trees, and finally to seek the nearest camping ground. For 



this purpose we ascended to a spring, called Sinasibong, at an elevation 



of 6000 ft. The narrowness of the ridge prevented our pitching the 



tent, small as it was, but the Lepchas rapidly constructed a house, and 



thatched it with bamboo and broad leaves of the wild plantain. A 



table was then raised in the middle, of 4 uprights and as many cross 



pieces of wood, lashed with strips of bamboo. Across this pieces of 



bamboo were laid, ingeniously flattened by taking lengths, crimping the 



cylinders all round, and then cutting it down one side, so that it opens 



into a flat slab, several inches across. Similar but longer and lower 



erections, one on each side the table, formed couch, bed or chair ; and 



in one short hour, half a dozen men, with only the long knife and 



active hands, had fitted us with a tolerably water-tight furnished house. 



A thick flooring of bamboo leaves keeps the feet dry, and a screen of 



these and other foliage all round, renders the habitation tolerably warm. 



It is at a little below this elevation, 3 — 5000 ft., that great scandent 



trees of the forests, enveloping trunks of others wholly or twisting 



round them, strangle the greatest of these, which decaying from out 



their folds, leave the reticulated sheath of climbers, as one of the most 



remarkable vegetable phenomenon of these mountains. Such belong to 



several orders, and may roughly be classified in two groups, 1. those 



which merely twine, and by constructing certain parts of their support, 



produce death; 2. those which form a reticulated mass or network round 



the trunk, by the coalescence of their lateral branches and rootlets, &c, 



