The flowers I have mentioned are so notoriously the harbingers of a European spring that their presence carries one home at once; but, as species, they differ from their European prototypes, and are accompanied at this elevation (and for 2000 feet higher up) with tree-fern, Pothos, bananas, palms, figs, pepper, numbers of epiphytal Orchids, and similar genuine tropical genera. The uniform temperature and humidity of the region here favour the extension of tropical plants into a temperate region; exactly as the same conditions cause similar forms to reach higher latitudes in the southern hemisphere (as in New Zealand, Tasmania, South Chili, etc.) than they do in the northern. Along this ridge I met with the first tree-fern. This species seldom reaches the height of forty feet; the black trunk is but three or four in girth, and the feathery crown is ragged in comparison with the species of many other countries: it is the _Alsophila gigantea,_ and ascends nearly to 7000 feet elevation. Kursiong bungalow, where I stopped for a few hours, is superbly placed, on a narrow mountain ridge. The west window looks down the valley of the Balasun river, the east into that of the Mahanuddee: both of these rise from the outer range, and flow in broad, deep, and steep valleys (about 4000 feet deep) which give them their respective names; and are richly wooded from the Terai to their tops. Till reaching this spur, I had wound upwards along the western slope of the Mahanuddee valley. The ascent from the spur at Kursiong, to the top of the mountain (on the northern face of which Dorjiling is situated), is along the eastern slope of the Balasun. From Kursiong a very steep zigzag leads up the mountain, through a magnificent forest of cbesnut, walnut, oaks, and laurels. It is difficult to conceive a grander mass of vegetation: the straight shafts of the timber-trees shooting aloft, some naked and clean, with grey, pale, or brown bark; others literally clothed for yards with a continuous garment of epiphytes, one mass of blossoms, especially the white Orchids _Cælogynes,_ which bloom in a profuse manner, whitening their trunks like snow. More bulky trunks were masses of interlacing climbers, _Araliaceæ, Leguminosæ, Vines,_ and _Menispermeæ,_ Hydrangea, and Peppers, enclosing a hollow, once filled by the now strangled supporting tree, which had long ago decayed away. From the sides and summit of these, supple branches hung forth, either leafy or naked; the latter resembling cables flung from one tree to another, swinging in the breeze, their rocking motion increased by the weight of great bunches of ferns or Orchids, which were perched aloft in the loops. Perpetual moisture nourishes this dripping forest: and pendulous mosses and lichens are met with in profusion.