[16] See Appendix C. The good soil was very richly cultivated with poppy (which I had not seen before), sugar-cane, wheat, barley, mustard, rape, and flax. At a distance a field of poppies looks like a green lake, studded with white water-lilies. The houses, too, are better, and have tiled roofs; while, in such situations, the road is lined with trees. A retrospect of the ground passed 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 species would be obtained, for of annuals I scarcely found twenty. At that season, however, the jungles of Behar and Birbhoom, though far from tropically luxuriant, are singularly unhealthy. In a geographical point of view the range of hills between Burdwan and the Soave is interesting, as being 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;[17] the granite of this and the sandstone of the other, being there both overlaid with trap. Further 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 Fort of Chunar on the Ganges. The general and geological features of the two, especially along their 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-fossiliferous limestone. Between the latter and the Paras-nath gneiss, come (in order of superposition) shivered and undulating strata of metamorphic quartz, hornstone, hornstone-porphyry, jaspers, etc. These are thrown up, by greenstone I believe, along the north and north-west boundary of the gneiss range, and are to be recognised as forming the rocks of Colgong, of Sultangunj, and of Monghyr, on the Ganges, as also various detached hills near Gyah, and along the upper course of the Soane. From these are derived the beautiful agates and cornelians, so famous under the name of Soane pebbles, and they are equally common on the Curruckpore range, as on the south bank of the Soane, so much so in the former position as to have been used in the decoration of the walls of the now ruined palaces near Bhagulpore. [17] A lofty mountain said to be 7000-8000 feet high.