THEE FERNS AND SCENERY. 



5 



Churra. These I have not yet seen ; the coal is of the very best de- 

 scription, it does not splinter, gives remarkably few ashes, affords an 

 admirable fire and the best coke. Water- courses are plenty about 

 Churra, but the body of water is at this season small, although it 

 becomes considerable after a few hours rain ; it is then that the 

 great fall at Moosmai becomes really beautiful, the water shooting 

 over the precipice and falling into a bason about 150 feet below. 

 By a succession of these falls, although of more limited height, it 

 at length reaches the bottom of the valley. It is only on the preci- 

 pices about the fall that the Chamserops appears to grow ; at the foot 

 of a precipice a little to the right (going from Churra,) a tree fern 

 grows, which I have Wallich's authority for stating to be Polypod 

 giganteum, a fern which occurred at Mahadeb, and which I have seen 

 in somewhat similar situations at Mergui. All my excursions have 

 been confined to this valley and to the water-courses immediately 

 around Churra ; once only have I quitted the table-land and proceed- 

 ed to Maamloo, and yet in this very limited space the profusion of 

 objects has been such as to enable me only to embrace a very limited 

 proportion. The above excursion proved very rich. About half way 

 to Maamloo I discovered a solitary tree fern (Alsophila BrunonianaJ 

 and to the left, and up the broken sides of the calcareous cliffs 

 that occur here and between Maamloo and Moosmai, a group of 

 several magnificent specimens, of which on the succeeding day 

 we brought home three. We saw none above 30 feet, although 

 the specimen in the British Museum from these hills measures 45. 

 Their axis is of small diameter, and is nearly cylindrical, the vas- 

 cular fascicles being disposed in covered bundles, often assuming 

 the form of a (JJ near the circumference of the very dense cellular 

 tissue of which the axis is chiefly composed. Towards the base it is 

 enveloped in an oblique dense mass of intermottled rigid fibres (roots) 

 » which, as they are developed in the greatest extent, the nearer they 

 approach the base, give the trunk a conical form. Their growth is 

 essentially endogenous, and will probably be found when examined 

 aborigine to approximate to that of Cycadese, although these last 

 are of a more exogenous than endogenous nature. Nothing however is 

 known of the growth of Palms, Cycadeae, or tree ferns. I have above 

 alluded to the calcareous rocks or cliffs ; these are of the same forma- 

 tion with those that occur so abundantly on the Tenasserim coast, 

 although they are much more rich in vegetation. These I first saw at 

 Terrya Ghat ; like those of Burmah they abound in caves, and assume 



