e vegetation rapidly diminishes in
stature and abundance, and the change in species is very great. Larch,
maple, cherry, and spiraea disappear, leaving willows, juniper,
stunted birch, silver fir, mountain ash berberries, currant,
honeysuckle, azalea, and many rhododendrons. The turfy ground is
covered with gentians, potentillas, geraniums, and purple and yellow
meconopsis, delphiniums, orchids, saxifrage, campanulas,
ranunculus, anemones, primulas (including the magnificent
_Primula Sikkimensis),_ and three or four species of ferns. The
country being now so much more open, the valley bottom and the
mountain-sides glow with purples and yellows of various shades.
Not even here, nor indeed anywhere in the Himalaya, do we see that
mass and glow of colour we find in California, where wide sheets of
meadow-land are ablaze with the purple of the lupins and the gold of
the Californian poppy. But for the number of varieties of plants
these upper valleys of the Teesta River can scarcely be excelled. As
we ascend the mountain-sides above Tangu we find them covered
with plants of numerous different kinds, and even at about 14,000
feet Hooker gathered over two hundred plants.

But now we are nearing the limit of plant life. At 17,000 feet the
vegetation has ceased to be alpine and has become arctic, and the
plants nearest the snow-line are minute primulas, saxifrages,
gentians, grasses, sedges, some tufted wormwood, and a dwarf
rhododendron, the most alpine of wooded plants.

At the summit of the Donkia Pass Hooker found one flowering plant,
the _Arenaria rupifragia._ The fescue _(Festuca ovina),_ a little fern
_(Woodsia),_ and a saussurea ascend very near the summit. A
pink-coloured woolly saussurea and _Delphinium glaciale_ are two of the
most lofty plants, and are commonly found from 17,500 feet to
18,000 feet. Besides some barren mosses several lichens grow on
the top, as _Cladonia vermicularis,_ the yellow _Lecidea
geographica_ and the orange _L. miniata._

At 18,300 feet Hooker found on one stone only a fine Scottish lichen,
a species of gyrophora, the "tripe de roche" of Arctic voyagers and
the food of the Canadian hunters. It is also abundant in the Scotch
Alps.

On the summit of Bhomtso, 18,590 feet, the only plants were the
lichens _Lecidea miniata_ (or _Parmalia miniata)_ mentioned
above, and borrera. The first-named minute lichen is the most arctic,
antarctic, alpine, and universally diffused in the world, and oft