1849.] Remarks on the Snow line in the Himalaya, 957 



distinctly stated that I mean another, — he proceeds to draw conclusions 

 which will not bear a moment's examination. Had he before passing 

 sentence of condemnation, bent his footsteps towards the upper parts of 

 Kunawur, he would have found that forests are not wanting to the north 

 of the Bissehir range, and consequently that my remarks could not apply 

 to it as the water-shed. — It is not until the traveller surmounts the 

 passes which lead from upper Kunawur into the Tartar districts, that 

 he beholds on the one hand a wooded country and on the other a com- 

 paratively barren waste, and when he has consequently placed nearly 

 the whole of Kunawur between himself and the Bissehir range to the 

 south. 



" The doctrine," says Lieut. Strachey, " which Capt. Hutton at- 

 tacks as erroneous, undoubtedly is so. But it is a doctrine that 

 was never inculcated by any one. Capt. Hutton having misunder- 

 stood the true enunciation of a proposition, reproduces it according 

 to his own mistaken views, and then destroys the phantom that he 

 has raised." — With all due deference to Lieut. Strachey, he must per- 

 mit me to remind him that assertion, however confidently made, — is 

 neither proof nor argument, and that the doctrine to which I alluded 

 did exist, may be gathered from Captain Jack's letter in No. 15, p. 

 458 of the Calcutta Journal of Natural History, and likewise from 

 Dr. Lord's remarks on the Hindu Kush,* which by the way Lieut. 

 Strachey does not deem it safe to comment upon ! Moreover, " the 

 phantom" which I and my supporters destroyed, was neither more nor 

 less than this, — that whereas the common doctrine assigned as an uni- 

 versal rule, a lower elevation to the southern snow line than to the 

 northern, we showed that it was only partially and not universally 

 applicable. Lieut. Strachey however, having rejected the explanation of 

 my meaning, as well as everything tending to militate against his own 

 preconceived notions, and having himself misunderstood the true 

 enunciation of my proposition, denies to his opponents the right of 

 crediting the evidence of their senses, and leads them to infer that he 

 is unwilling to admit the truth of any fact which he cannot actually 

 see. The erroneous idea, which he has imbibed, that the Bissehir 

 range is my true Himalaya, as he loves to call it, — is founded on an 



* Cal. J. Nat. Hist. No. 14, p. 276. 



6 H 



