The road continues for eight or ten miles beyond Sabargam, passing another rest house at Phallut. Instead of returning by the Tonglo road an agreeable and interesting route may be taken to Darjeeling by con¬ tinuing along the ridge to the Islumbo pass, so called in Hooker's Himalayan Journals, but now known as the Chiabunjun or Singalela pass, which descends by a steep track, passable for ponies in the dry season, to the monasteries of Pemiongchi and Sanga Chelling, and so to Darjeeling, either by crossing the Little Rangit and going along the high forest-clad ridge between it and the Tista and descending by Namchi, or by the route described by Plooker along the Little Rangit valley. As, however, our plans did not allow this, and I had previously made a trip in the reverse direction, I returned from Sabargam to Sandakphu, rain coming on in the afternoon. The weather during our trip was either unusually fine, or the amount of rainfall on this range was not so great as at Darjeeling, for we never during the seven days of our stay on Singalela had heavy rain till late in the afternoon, and the nights were only partially wet, giving us on two occasions fine though not cloudless views of Everest and Kanchenjunga.
The return journey to Tonglo need not be particularly described, though several fine plants and insects not observed on the outward route were obtained. Among them I may mention a very fine yellow Gentian¬ like plant, three or four feet high, with flowers as large as a small teacup, and a curious large-flowered Chirita or allied plant, found high on Tonglo. Abundance of the beautiful delicate little Pleione Hookeri grows on the rhododendrons and other trees at about 10,000 feet for some miles on the road; and two of our prettiest garden shrubs in England, Leycesteria formosa and Hypericum patulum, were both abundant on the east side of Tonglo at 9,000 feet.
On ascending the high bare ridge about two miles north of Tonglo, on one of the days of our stay there, I was delighted to see one of the finest and most unique butterflies in the world, Teinopalpus imperialis, generally known among Darjeeling collectors as the Sinchul butterfly. As I do not think its habits have been described, I will say a few words about it. The genus is monotypic among the Papilionidæ, and the insect is a splendid mixture of green and gold with long pointed tails on the hind wing. It appears to be confined to the forest-clad tops of the outer hills of Sikkim, having, to my knowledge, only been taken on Sinchul, Tonglo, and Tendong at from 6,000 to 10,000 feet. The male flies on sunny mornings in June and July, with a very strong sailing and somewhat jerky flight, between nine and eleven o’clock, and settles occasionally on stones or trees, generally out of reach of a net; but, being bold, it may often be attracted within reach by a bait. The female, however, which probably remains in the dense forest at the tops of the trees, is hardly ever seen, and as far as I know, only six or seven specimens have ever been taken, though very high prices are offered by collectors. Indeed, to take a female of the “Sinchul wallah” is looked on by the numerous professional butterfly catchers in Sikkim as the height of success. The mod plant and larva, formerly unknown, has now been discovered by Knyvett, who found the larva feeding on Daphne nipalensis.
