336 F. Kingdon Ward. 
Unfortunately I was unable to proceed west of the Salween, 
but from above that river I obtained splendid views of the ridge 
separating the Salween from the ’Nmai-kha (the eastern branch of 
the Irrawaddy) capped both in June and November by a string of 
snow-clad peaks which evidently received the full force of the 
monsoon rains. 
The Salween ridge is far more densely forested than is the 
Yangtze ridge, and presents several formations, such as Alnus forest, 
and high alpine meadow, not represented at all on the latter; but 
the composition of the forest on the two ridges presented, so far as 
I was able to judge, much greater differences than did the alpine 
flora, a fact doubtless to be attributed to the greater relative 
importance of rain to forest-land than to grass-land. 
A traveller crossing from the Yangtze to the Salween during 
the summer would inevitably pronounce the flora of the Salween 
ridge to be far the richer of the two ; nevertheless I do not think he 
would be correct. Richer it emphatically is in individuals, as also 
in genera, but this is compensated for by the circumstance that the 
genera which occur on the Yangtze ridge are far richer in species. 
Moreover, as already remarked, the rains break earlier on the 
Salween ridge than on the Yangtze ridge, so that while the former 
yields pre-eminently a summer flora, the latter is typified by an 
autumn flora; I have found gentians in bloom on the Yangtze 
ridge in October at 16,000 feet, when at the same time deep snow 
extended from 12,000 feet on the Salween side. 
As to the ridges west of the Salween, I may mention that in 
A-tun-tsi I met an official who two years previously had crossed 
from the Salween to the ’Nmai-kha and beyond, somewhat to the 
north of Prince Henry’s route, and another Chinaman who had 
accompanied Prince Henry himself in 1895. Both men spoke of 
dense jungle throughout the journey, of tigers and elephants, and 
of continuous drenching rain ; but when I asked if it would not be 
possible to cross during the fine winter months, they thought that 
the snow on the passes would be too deep. 
The main formations, then, owe their nature to the summer 
rains of the S.W. monsoon, but when we come to details in any 
particular locality, we find the effect of these conditions to a 
considerable extent masked by superimposed conditions directly due 
to the topographical peculiarities of the country, namely the trench¬ 
like valleys immediately overshadowed by the colossal peaks of the 
dividing ridges. 
