Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/234

 lousewort (Pedicularis resupinata), the columbine (Aquilegia viridiflora), the nonsuch (Medicago lupulina), the speedwells (Veronica Sibirica and another), the elecampane (Inula Britannica), three or four varieties of Ranunculi, the avens (Geum strictum), the iris (Adenophora sp.), the milfoil (Achillea Mongolica), and in dry places the nightshade (Solanum sp.) and nettle (Urtica angustifolia).

Lastly, blossoming on the unwooded hillsides were the carnation (Dianthus Seguieri), the rocket (Hesperis trichocephala), the poppy (Papaver Alpinum), the yellow stonecrop (Sedum aizoon), the wolf's bane, or globe thistle (Echinops Dauricus), the onion (Allium sp.), Kœleria cristata, Statice sp. Paradanthus, and others.

In general the flora of the Munni-ula reminded me a good deal of that of Siberia, although these forests are very different to ours in the north. Here there is none of that luxuriant vegetation which excites the admiration of the traveller on the banks of the Amur and Ussuri. The trees are not high, and their trunks are slender, the bushes are low and stunted, and the withered branches of the willows protruding from the living trees are unsightly objects amid the prevailing verdure. The mountain brooks, which are almost all full of running water in the wooded ravines, no sooner enter the more open valleys, or issue from the margin of the range, than they entirely disappear beneath the soil, leaving dry beds in which the water only collects after heavy rain; the forests too have been ruthlessly destroyed