Terrya bungalow lies at the very foot of the first rise of the mountains; on the way we crossed many small streams upon the elephants, and one large one by canoes: the water in all was cool* [Temperature in September 77 degrees to 80 degrees; and in November 75.7 degrees.] and sparkling, running rapidly over boulders and pebbles. Their banks of sandy clay were beautifully fringed with a willow-like laurel, _Ehretia_ bushes, bamboos, palms, _Bauhinia, Bombax,_ and _Erythrina,_ over which _Calamus_ palm (rattan) and various flowering plants climbed. The rock at Terrya is a nummulitic limestone, worn into extensive caverns. This formation is said to extend along the southern flank of the Khasia, Garrow, and Jyntea mountains, and to be associated with sandstone and coal: it is extensively quarried in many places, several thousand tons being annually shipped for Calcutta and Dacca. It is succeeded by a horizontally stratified sandstone, which is continued up to 4000 feet, where it is overlain by coal-beds and then by limestone again. The sub-tropical scenery of the lower and outer Sikkim Himalaya, though on a much more gigantic scale, is not comparable in beauty and luxuriance with the really tropical vegetation induced by the hot, damp, and insular climate of these perennially humid mountains. At the Himalaya forests of gigantic trees, many of them deciduous, appear from a distance as masses of dark gray foliage, clothing mountains 10,000 feet high: here the individual trees are smaller, more varied in kind, of a brilliant green, and contrast with gray limestone and red sandstone rocks and silvery cataracts. Palms are more numerous here;* [There are upwards of twenty kinds of Palm in this district, including _Chamaerops,_ three species of _Areca,_ two of _Wallichia, Arenga, Caryota,_ three of _Phoenix, Plectocomia, Licuala,_ and many species of _Calamus._ Besides these there are several kinds of _Pandanus,_ and the _Cycas pectinata._] the cultivated _Areca_ (betel-nut) especially, raising its graceful stem and feathery crown, "like an arrow shot down from heaven," in luxuriance and beauty above the verdant slopes. This difference is at once expressed to the Indian botanist by defining the Khasia flora as of Malayan character; by which is meant the prevalence of brilliant glossy-leaved evergreen tribes of trees (as _Euphorbiaceae_ and _Urticeae_), especially figs, which abound in the hot gulleys, where the property of their roots, which inosculate and form natural grafts, is taken advantage of in bridging streams, and in constructing what are called living bridges, of the most picturesque forms. _Combretaceae,_ oaks, oranges, _Garcinia_ (gamboge), _Diospyros,_ figs, Jacks, plantains, and _Pandanus,_ are more frequent here, together with pinnated leaved _Leguminosae, Meliaceae,_ vines and peppers, and above all palms, both climbing ones with pinnated shining leaves (as _Calamus_ and _Plectocomia_),