NOTES FROM A JOURNEY TO NEPAL. 
93 
ances of the vegetation in Sikkim and Nep41. The comparison will be 
much more superficial than is desirable, but will be a beginning of 
knowledge of the relationship of the two. 
First of all to the eye the Sdl forests under the hills present great 
similarities. On the edge in both places, the tall scarlet Leonotis 
nepetdgfolia and the lilac Plectranthus ternijolius occur. Stereosper~ 
mum suaveolens^ Heynea trijUga and Cedrela Toona flourish where 
the forest is not pure; and Anisomeles ovata is common. Dioscoreas 
and other climbers, with annual stems, twine round the sal trees 
separately, not binding them together ; and a variety of smallish plants 
find a place in the shade. 
The dissimilarities which are noteworthy are that epiphytic orchids 
and the epiphyte Poly podium coronans are far more common in the 
Sikkim Terai forests than in those of the Nepdl Terai ; and that while 
Nyctanthes makes a feature in parts of the Nepdl forests it is absent 
from those of Sikkim. 
Just where the level Sal forest gives place to the pines on the slopes 
of the Chorea Ghdti hills, Desmodium confertum becomes most 
abundant : it is a plant very common in the Sal forests of the Darjeeling 
district at a little distance from the plains. Boehmeria platyphylla is 
like it common in the two places, and both Deeringia celosioides 
and Polygonum chtnense are common in the Sil forests of the Nepdl 
hills and in the Tista valley of Sikkim. 
The pine forests of the Chorea Ghdti are absent from the Sikkim 
Himalaya. The pines (Pinus longifolia) are quite absent from the 
hill faces south of Darjeeling, and almost absent from the Tista valley 
where they do but grow on some dry rocky spurs near Pashok, which 
is over the junction of the Tista and Runjit ; and they grow in the 
Runjlt valley, as at Badamtam. Of the plants associated with them in 
Nepdl, JBchmanthera Wallichii and Scutellaria repens absent them- 
selves in Sikkim. Blumea ohovata is also absent ; Swertia angusli- 
folia, var. Wallichii and Anaphalis araneosa are rare or absent from 
the wetter hill faces of Sikkim, though found abundantly further back at 
Darjeeling and northwards on rather dry slopes ; Bcehmeria rugulosa 
becomes very rare in Sikkim ; and Scutellaria discolor, to, be found 
in quantity, must be searched for north of the Tista Bridge, where 
Pinus appears. The other plants, e.g., Indigofera hirsuta, Maoutia 
Puya, Echinacanthus longistylus, Strohilantkes capitatus, Musssenda 
Roxburgkii and Geniosporum strohiliferum hold their own in the 
Sikkim Himalaya ; but they do not make any plant association as in 
Nepal : they associate in these forests of Nepal with plants of Eastern 
type, so that we have a curiously mixed eastern and western vegetation 
on the Chorea Ghati belt. 
