_December_ 5.--On looking out this morning, it was with a feeling of awe that I gazed at the stupendous ice-crowned precipices that shot up to the summit of Nango, their flanks spotted white at the places whence the gigantic masses with which I was surrounded had fallen; thence my eye wandered down their black faces to the slope of debris at the bottom, thus tracing the course which had probably been taken by that rock under whose shelter I had passed the previous night. Meepo, the Lepcha sent by the rajah, had snared a couple of beautiful pheasants, one of which I skinned, and ate for breakfast; it is a small bird, common above 12,000 feet, but very wild; the male has two to five spurs on each of its legs, according to its age; the general colour is greenish, with a broad scarlet patch surrounding the eye; the Nepalese name is "Khalidge." The crop was distended with juniper berries, of which the flesh tasted strongly, and it was the very hardest, toughest bird I ever did eat. We descended at first through rhododendron and juniper, then through black silver-fir (_Abies Webbiana_), and below that, near the river, we came to the Himalayan larch; a tree quite unknown, except from a notice in the journals of Mr. Griffith, who found it in Bhotan. It is a small tree, twenty to forty feet high, perfectly similar in general characters to a European larch, but with larger cones, which are erect upon the very long, pensile, whip-like branches; its leaves,--now red--were falling, and covering the rocky ground on which it grew, scattered amongst other trees. It is called "Saar" by the Lepchas and Cis-himalayan Tibetans, and "Boarga-sella" by the Nepalese, who say it is found as far west as the heads of the Cosi river: it does not inhabit Central or West Nepal, nor the North-west Himalaya. The distribution of the Himalayan pines is very remarkable. The Deodar has not been seen east of Nepal, nor the _Pinus Gerardiana, Cupressus torulosa,_ or _Juniperus communis._ On the other hand, _Podocarpus_ is confined to the east of Katmandoo. _Abies Brunoniana_ does not occur west of the Gogra, nor the larch west of the Cosi, nor funereal cypress (an introduced plant, however) west of the Teesta (in Sikkim). Of the twelve* [Juniper, 3; yew, _Abies Webbiana, Brunoniana,_ and _Smithiana_: Larch, _Pinus excelsa,_ and _longifolia,_ and _Podocarpus neriifolia._] Sikkim and Bhotan _Coniferae_ (including yew, junipers, and _Podocarpus_) eight are common to the North-west Himalaya (west of Nepal), and four* [Larch, _Cupressus funebris, Podocarpus neriifolia, Abies Brunoniana._] are not: of the thirteen natives of the north-west provinces, again, only five* [A juniper (the European _communis_), Deodar (possibly only a variety of the Cedar of Lebanon and of Mount Atlas), _Pinus Gerardiana, P. excelsa,_ and _Crupressus torulosa._] are not found in Sikkim, and I have given their names below, because they show how