trailing plant. In the dry sandy pasture at the top of the rocks were numbers of a beautiful herbaceous plant with large blue gentian-like flowers, Exacum tetragonum. The only birds I saw here were a few shrikes, bulbuls, swallows and mynahs, with a vulture or two soaring overhead. On the next day I rode for about ten miles on the Gowhatty road as far as the bridge over the Khiri river, which is about 2,000 feet below Shillong. The first four or five miles lay over the plateau which is there better wooded than in most parts, but the woods consist of pines and bushes rather than of true forest trees. Then the road turns round the shoulder of the hill into the Umiang valley and winds down the side of this for five or six miles. The day being fine and hot, I saw more butterflies there than anywhere else near Shillong, many of a decidedly tropical character, including several Papilios, Euplœas and Lycœnidæ, but nowhere in any¬ thing like the abundance or variety that one would expect. Towards the lower part of the descent the vegetation in shady gullies was of an almost tropical character with figs, tree-ferns and large climbing Mucunas; but at the bottom the road comes out into the great stretch of bare, grass- covered downs which I described on the journey up from Gowhatty. There, by the side of little ravines, I found two pretty blues, Thecla nissa and Hypolycœna Grotei, both of which occur in Sikkim, but less commonly.
The valley of the Umiang looked like good collecting ground, but owing to the want of paths I could not explore it far, and found the long coarse grass very difficult to get through. The scarcity of paths in all parts of the Khasia hills is very annoying to the naturalist. It seems to be caused by the scarcity of cattle, for though the country appears to be better adapted for them than some parts of the Himalayas, they are kept in small numbers and seemingly are of very little use. The breed is small and not badly shaped, some hornless and of a red colour like small polled Norfolk cattle. They seem to be more beefy and better adapted for slaughter than the ordinary Bengal breed, but give very little milk, which is not, how¬ ever, used by the Khasia people. The cattle are also but little employed for draught, most of the cultivation being done by hand. It is said that the long period of dry cold weather makes the grass very coarse, but I noticed that it was much shorter and of better quality where it had been regularly fed down, and I think that with some care and judgment both cattle and horses might be bred with success in these hills. The few ponies that are kept all come from Bhutan, Manipur, or the plains, and the natives apparently have no idea of breeding them, though the demand among planters and others in Assam is considerable. Sheep have been tried near Shillong but were said to have thriven badly on account of the innumerable caterpillars which cover the grass at certain seasons, but I could not learn that any serious attempt had been made in the way of pastoral farming by anyone with adequate experience. An enormous quantity of grass goes to waste annually, which, if converted into silage when young, would make very fair winter fodder; as this system has been proved highly successful in the plains of India, it might well be tried.
On September 11th my baggage was still on the road from Gowhatty, but we determined to wait no longer and started for a week’s excursion to Nunklow, which is about thirty-six miles from Shillong on the old road
