In the more open parts of the forest we found large scattered flocks of small birds, belonging to many different genera and species, which associate at this season and feed their way in straggling bands, which keep together but move steadily in the same direction. At five successive shots out of such a company I killed Siva cyanoptera, Minla ignotincta, a Phylloscopus, an Abrornis, and an Ixulus.
This assemblage of birds, belonging to many different genera but all having the same habits, is peculiar so far as I have noticed to this sub- region. I have observed the same thing among birds of the same genera in the forest of Formosa at the same season and elevation. It is also very remarkable how the bills of certain birds, which feed and live in the dense bamboo scrub at higher elevations, have been modified in opposite directions, though as far as we know, their food is similar. Take for instance the Xiphirhynchus superciliaris, which is the only species of a genus peculiar to the Eastern Himalaya and always found in bamboo jungle. Its bill is very long and curved like that of a honey-sucker, whilst Heteromorpha unicolor has its bill reduced to the shortest possible dimensions, like that of Suthora and Propasser . Another curious instance is that of Chloropsis paradoxa, a bird as yet only found by Abb6 David in Western China, which is so like Heteromorpha that if its feet were cut off it would be hard to distinguish; but this bird has the outer toe on each foot completely aborted—an unique case so far as I know among all its allies.
We spent Christmas Day at Tumlong, the old capital of Sikkim, in the same monastery where I had previously lodged, and found it much more chilly there, with the snow lying in patches in the forest at 8,200 feet. Notwithstanding this, two very beautiful shrubs were in full flower, Edgworthia Gardneri and Luculia gratissima, which I have generally had in flower at Christmas in my greenhouse at home, where its fragrance seems greater than in its native country. Some years afterwards when Mr. White was resident at this place as representative of the Indian Government he had a most lovely garden which is illustrated in his book on Sikkim and Bhutan, a work that forms an admirable supplement to Hooker’s Himalayan Journals.
We visited the Rajah the next day and found him to be a young man of apparently feeble intellect, with a hare-lip, who had little or nothing to say. The Padang Lama, who at that time was acting as “vakeel” to the Indian Government, was very civil and received us hospitably.
After leaving Tumlong we descended again to the Tista valley and crossed it by a cane bridge at Samdong. Thence we ascended 3,000 feet through a forest of very fine trees to Mongong Gompa, where we stayed for two nights as the weather became wet and I had a considerable number of bird skins to dry and pack. In the twenty days during which our trip lasted we got no less than ninety-four species, including many of great beauty and some rarity. Among them was a woodcock, which I myself never saw in Sikkim, but which is not uncommon in some seasons; a very rare wren, Troglodytes pnnctatus, peculiar to Sikkim; and a small grebe which I saw only in the small stagnant lake near the monastery at Mongong.
