Volume 1

Himalayan journals, or, notes of a naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia mountains, &c / by Joseph Dalton Hooker.

  • Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Himalayan journals, or, notes of a naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia mountains, &c / by Joseph Dalton Hooker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    72/468 (page 32)
    A retrospect of the ground ])assed over is unsatisfactory, as far as botany is concerned, except as showing how potent are the effects of a dry soil and climate during one season of the year upon a vegetation which has no desert types. During the rains probably many more s[)ecies would be obtained, for of annuals I scarcely found^twenty. At that season, however, the jungles of Behar and Birbhoom, though far from tropicahy luxuriant, are singularly unhealthy. In a geographical point of view the range of hills between Burdwan and the Soane is interesting, as beiinj the north-east continuation of a chain which crosses the broadest part of the peninsula of India, from the Gulf of Cambay to the junction of the Ganges and Hoogly at Rajmahal. This range runs south of the Soane and Kymore, which it meets I believe at Omerkuntuk;* the granite of this and the sandstone of the other, being there both overlaid with trap. Burther west again, the ranges separate, the southern still betraying a nucleus of granite, forming the Satpur range, which divides the valley of the Taptee from that of the Nerbudda. The Paras-nath range is, though the most difficult of definition, the longer of the two parallel ranges; the Vindhya continued as the Kymore, terminating abruptly at the Port of Chunar on the Ganges. The general and geological features of the two, especially along theh eastern course, are very different. This consists of metamorphic gneiss, in various highly inclined beds, through which granite hills protrude, the loftiest of which is Paras-nath. The north-east Vindhya (called Kymore), on the other hand, consists of nearly horizontal beds of sandstone, overlying inclined beds of non-fossili- ferous limestone. Between the latter and the Paras-nath * A lofty mountain said to be 7000—8000 feet high.