Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/873

Rh HIMALAYA 833 umber species idchar-
 * ter of

.milies. Hippophae. The ordinary firewood of the more elevated tracts is supplied by bushes of Caragana, the furze of travellers, and dwarf Lonicera and willow. Species of Astragalus, Urtica, Allium, small Cruciferce and saxifrages, Saussurea, and Rheum are common. Artemisia? sand many salt-plants, with Glaux maritima and Triylochin, are found, especially on the borders of the salt lakes. Mosses and ferns are very rare. Many European grasses and Carices occur in the pastures. The herbaceous vegetation ascends freely to 16,000 feet, and isolated plants may be found as high as 19,000 feet ; but excepting in the close neighbour hood of small streams the growth is very scanty, and not one-twentieth of the surface is commonly clothed with vegetation. Barley is cultivated up to 15,000 feet, wheat, millet, and rape, with buckwheat, being common ip to 12,000 feet. Apples and apricots grow up to 11,000 and 12,000 feet, and grapes to 9000 feet. The total number of flowering plants inhabiting the range amounts probably to 5000 or 6000 species, among which may be reckoned several hundred common English plants chiefly from the temperate and alpine regions ; and the characteristic of the flora as a whole is that it contains a general and tolerably complete illustration of almost all the chief natural families of all parts of the world, and has comparatively few distinctive features of its own. The timber trees of the Himalaya are very numerous, but few of them are known to be of much value, and the difficulties of transport are so great as to render their removal to a distance in many cases impracticable. The &quot;Sal&quot; is one of the most valuable of the trees; with the &quot;Toon&quot; and &quot;Sissoo,&quot;it grows in the outer ranges most accessible from the plains. The &quot;Deodar&quot; is also much used, but the other pines produce timber that is not durable. Bamboos grow everywhere along the outer ranges, and ratans to the eastward, and are largely exported for use in the plains of India. Other vegetable products of econo mical value, excluding the ordinary cereals and esculent plants, are not numerous ; and the primitive condition of the people and the difficulties and expense of carriage are so great as to render the trade in such articles very insignificant. Though one species of coffee is indigenous in the hotter Himalayan forests, the climate does not appear suitable for the growth of the plant which supplies the coffee of commerce. The cultivation of tea, however, is now carried on successfully on a large scale, both in the east and west of the mountains, and has already become an important item of the export trade of India. In the western Himalaya the cultivated variety of the tea plant of China has been introduced, and succeeds well ; on the east the indigenous tea of Assam, which is not specifically different, and is perhaps the original parent of the Chinese variety, is now almost everywhere preferred. The produce of the Chinese variety in the hot and wet climate of the eastern Himalaya, Assam, and eastern Bengal is neither so abundant nor so highly flavoured as that of the indigenous plant, and there fore not so commercially valuable. The cultivation of the cinchona, several species of which have been introduced from South America and naturalized in the Sikim Himalaya, is still in its infancy, but promises to yield at a comparatively small cost an ample supply of the precious febrifuge that is extracted from its bark. At present the manufacture is almost wholly in the hands of the Government, and the drug prepared is all disposed of in India. The progress of cinchona cultivation on the Nilgherries is not less promising than on the Himalaya. The general distribution of animal life on these mountains is manifestly determined by much the same conditions that have controlled the vegetation. The connexion with Europe on the north-west, with China on the north-east, with Africa on the south-west, and with the Malavan region on the southeast is manifest; and the greater or less preval ence of the European and Eastern forms varies according to more western or eastern position on the chain. So far as is known these remarks will apply to the extinct as well as to the existing fauna. The Paleozoic forms found in the Himalaya are very close to those of Europe, and in some cases identical. The Triassic fossils are still more closely allied, more than a third of the species being identical. Among the Jurassic Mollusca, also, are many species that are common in Europe. The Siwalik fossils contain 84 species of mammals of 45 genera, the whole bearing a marked resemblance to the Miocene fauna of Europe, but containing a larger number of genera still existing, espe cially of ruminants, and as before stated now held to be of Pliocene age. The fauna of the Tibetan Himalaya is essentially Euro- Faun; pean, or rather that of the northern half of the old con- Tibet tineut, which region has by zoologists been termed Palse- re g io1 arctic. Among the characteristic animals may be named the yak, from which is reared a cross breed with the ordinary horned cattle of India locally called &quot; zobu,&quot; many wild sheep, and two antelopes, as well as the musk- deer ; several hares and some burrowing animals, including pikas (Lagomys) and two or three species of marmot ; cer tain arctic forms of carnivora fox, wolf, lynx, ounce, marten, and ermine ; also wild asses. Among birds are found bustard and species of sand-grouse and partridge ; water-fowl in great variety, which breed on the lakes in summer and migrate to the plains of India in winter; the raven, hawks, eagles and owls, a magpie, and two kinds of chough ; and many smaller birds of the passerine order, amongst which are several finches. Reptiles, as might be anticipated, are far from numerous, but a few lizards ore found, belonging for the most part to types, such as Phrynocephalus, characteristic of the Central-Asiatic area. The fishes from the head waters of the Indus also belong, for the most part, to Central-Asiatic types, with a small admixture of purely Himalayan forms. Amongst the former are several peculiar small-scaled carps, belonging to the genus Schizothorax and its allies. The ranges of the Himalaya, from the border of Tibet Of Hi to the plains, form a zoological region which is one of the a .aya richest of the world, particularly in respect to birds, to ^ e &quot; e ~ which the forest-clad mountains offer almost every range ia of temperature. Only two or three forms of monkey enter the moun- jj am _ tains, the langur, a species of Semnopithecus, ranging up mals. to 8000 or 9000 feet. No lemurs occur, although a species is found in Assam, and another in southern India. Bats are numerous, but the species are for the most part not peculiar to the area; several European forms are found at the higher elevations. Moles, which are unknown in the Indian peninsula, abound in the forest regions of the eastern Himalayas at a moderate altitude, and shrews of several species are found almost everywhere ; amongst them arc two very remarkable forms of water-shrew, one of which, however, Nectogale, recently discovered, is probably Tibetan rather than Himalayan. Bears are common, and so are a marten, several weasels and otters, and cats of various kinds and sizes, from the little spotted Felis lengalensis, smaller than a domestic cat, to animals like the clouded leopard rivalling a leopard in size. Leopards are common, and the tiger wanders to a considerable elevation, but can hardly be considered a permanent inhabitant, except in the lower valleys. Civets, the mungoose (Ichneumon}, and tree-cats (Paradoxurus) are only found at the smaller eleva tions. Wild dogs (Cuon) are common, but neither foxes nor wolves occur in the forest area. Besides these carnivora some very peculiar forms are found, the most remarkable of which is Jblurus, sometimes called the cat-bear, a type XL 105