bamboo, and then through forests of Abies Webbiana. A striking contrast this to the dense sub-tropical vegetation of the last two days, but yet there is nothing Alpine about the scenery except the snowy panorama to the north, and there are few or no truly Alpine plants such as Saxi¬ frages, Sedums, Primulas, Gentians or Pedicularis, which form such a wealth of floral beauty on the higher mountains of the interior. No Alpine butterflies fly over these pastures and, except for an occasional Argynnis lathonia, and a number of the fine black and white Satyrus padma on the skirts of the pinewoods, I hardly see a butterfly all day. A few small Geometers occasionally flit across the path, but birds and animals are scarce, and the tap of the pied woodpecker, Picus cathpharius, the croak of the curious Conostoma æmodium, and the Sikkim nutcracker, Nucifraga humispila, and the chirp of the beautiful black and yellow Tarsiger chrysæus or rosy finch, Propasser thura, are almost the only sounds which meet the ear. Meconopsis Wallichii, perhaps the most beautiful herbaceous plant in the world, as I think, is, however, in great profusion and was at 11,000 to 12,000 feet more forward in flower than at Tonglo and lower elevations. Imagine a large rosette of leaves clothed with long golden hairs, which, when covered with raindrops, glisten in the sunshine, running up into a branching spike of golden green buds covered with similar hairs, and opening from the top downwards into large poppy-like flowers, normally of a bright pale purple, whose centre is filled with a mass of golden anthers. In this locality these flowers vary in colour from pale lilac to a deep claret red, and with their congeners Meconopsis nepalensis and M. simplicifolia, both found in Sikkim in other localities, are the greatest ornaments of those few English gardens where they thrive. The shape of the fir trees also attracts attention, for they are unique among those of all the pine forests that I have seen, in the numbers of tree-ferns and shrubs growing on them as epiphytes and in the extraordinary contortions of form which their giant trunks assume. They are such trees as Gustave Doré imagined and tried to draw, but never saw in nature, and though, owing to forest fires, they are already in many cases dead or dying, and no young seedlings seem to be coming on to replace them, they are worthy of the attention of any lover of nature. Imagine a gnarled trunk five or six feet in diameter covered with long waving moss and buried in ferns and vacciniums, and branching sometimes into four or five great trees, twisted at all angles from an upright course, and bearing on their branches, or on the half-rotten crevices of their trunks, large maples, aralias, or mountain ash, and sometimes all these on the same tree. I presume that the strange forms assumed by those trees are largely owing to their growth being so smothered by the epiphytes which the damp climate allows to grow; and the strange absence of conifers in the outer hills of Sikkim must be attributed to the same cause, as first pointed out by Sir J. Hooker. A good deal of Aconite grows on this ridge, from 10,000 feet upwards, and is considered poisonous to sheep, cattle and horses at some seasons of the year. The sheep are all muzzled with little bamboo muzzles when passing over or along this ridge in spring, but at this season, probably owing to the abundance of other herbage, animals do not appear to touch the plant.
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