Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/168

 *[Footnote: (on Mounts Parnassus, Taygetus, and Œta) a long needled variety (foliis apice integris, breviter mucronatis), the Abies Apollinis of Link. (Linnæa, Bd. xv. 1841, S. 529; and Endlicher, Synopsis Coniferarum, p. 96.)

On the Himalaya the Coniferæ are distinguished by the great thickness and height of their trunks, and by the length of their leaves. The Deodwara Cedar, Pinus deodara (Roxb.),—(properly, in Sanscrit, dêwa-dâru, timber of the Gods),—which is from 12 to 13-1/2 feet thick, is the great ornament of the mountains. It grows in Nepaul to 11000 (11720 E.) feet above the level of the sea. More than 2000 years ago the Deodara supplied the materials for the fleet of Nearchus on the Hydaspes (the present Behut). In the valley of Dudegaon, north of the copper mines of Dhunpour in Nepaul, Dr. Hoffmeister, so early lost to science, found the Pinus longifolia of Royle (the Tschelu Pine) growing among tall stems of the Chamærops martiana of Wallich. (Hoffmeister's Briefe aus Indien wahrend der Expedition des Prinzen Waldemar von Preussen, 1847, S. 351.) Such an intermixture of pineta and palmata had excited the surprise of the companions of Columbus in the New Continent, as a friend and cotemporary of the Admiral, Petrus Martyr Anghiera, has informed us. (Dec. iii. lib. 10, p. 68.) I saw myself this intermixture of pines and palms for the first time on the road from Acapulco to Chilpanzingo. The Himalaya, like the Mexican highlands, has, besides Pines and Cedars, also the forms of Cypresses (Cupressus torulosa (Don), of Yews (Taxus wallichiana, Zuccar.), of Podocarpus (P. nereifolia, Robert Brown), and of]*