NOTFS FROM A JOURNEY TO NEPAL. 
95 
Nephrolepis tuherosa^ Gleichenia dichot^ma^ Drymarta copdata^ 
Artemisia vulgaris ^ Baenninghausenia alhiflora^ Laggera pterodonta, 
Melastoma malabathrUum^ Calos0sia Antifuprnm and ellip- 
ticus. Lindenbergia grmdifiora, conpmoii in Nepdl, is locaUy common 
in Sikkim. Rut whereas in Nepil Rosa moschata is most abundant 
and a feature of the Nep4l valley, it is absent from the Sikkim 
Himalaya— driven out '(one must conclude) by the rain. Oxyspora 
paniculata locally abundant in Nepdl seems to be rare on the wettest 
hills of Sikkim, though very common at some distance from the plains. 
In the cultivation belt are the downs of Mdrkhu with plants most 
unlike those of Sikkim, e.g.^ L^otus cprniculatus^ Campanula sylvatica 
and Oldenlandia gracilis. These grassy downs with their short turf 
and bushes of Prinsepia, Rosa and Rubus are much more like hill- 
sides towards Simla than hill-sides towards Darjeeling. High up on 
them Gaultheria fragrantissima makes little fence-like lines in 
places where the slope of the hill -has favoured its growth. Phyllan^ 
thus parvifoiius is there most common ; but in British Sikkim I have 
only seen it in one place. 
The upper forest belt is the hardest to write of, because so little 
of it could be examined. It has been shown how much more eastern 
than western ia its vegetation ; its appearance is often more western 
than eastern— a consequence ot the wholesale destruction fpr firewood 
to which it is subjected, and which is more a feature of the hills 
towards Simla thag the less populated hills of Sikkim : but this resem- 
blance is fortuitous. The oaks of the upper forest belt along the 
ridges where they have escaped the axe, the moss that hangs thick on 
their branches, the trees of Prunus Puddum and Alnus nepalensis, the 
bushes of Luculia^ Msesa^ Neillia thyrsiflora^ Priotropis cytisoides, 
Dickroa febrifuga, Berberis nepalensis and Hypericum patulum^ 
the climbers as Clematis Buchanantana, Rubus paniculatus and 
Hedera Helix fthe patches of Gleichenia longissima filling hollows, the 
abundance of Swertias, Valeriana Hardwickitf Hydrocotyle javanica 
Sanicula europaea^ Geranium nepalense^ Parochetus communis^ 
G'Fnura anguUsa^ Pratia begoni folia and Andropogon assimilis, are 
as in Sikkim. But whereas in Sikkim one generally finds several Rhodo- 
dendrons on the hills where R. arbor eum grows, one does not do so in 
Nepdl. One of the Nepdl oaks Quercus semecarpipolia^ like several 
plants mentioned already, avoids the wettest forests of the outer 
Sikkim Himalaya. 
The hills of Nep^l show a great poverty, as compared with Sikkim, 
in the number of species present ; but then we know so little of the 
Nepdl hills, and there are doubtless so many plants yet to be found 
