On arriving, I saw a troop of large monkeys* [_Macacus Pelops?_ Hodgson. This is a very different species from the tropical kind seen in Nepal, and mentioned at vol. i, Chapter XII.] gambolling in a wood of _Abies Brunoniana_: this surprised me, as I was not prepared to find so tropical an animal associated with a vegetation typical of a boreal climate. The only other quadrupeds seen here were some small earless rats, and musk-deer; the young female of which latter sometimes afforded me a dish of excellent venison; being, though dark-coloured and lean, tender, sweet, and short-fibred. Birds were scarce, with the exception of alpine pigeons (_Columba leuconota_), red-legged crows (_Corvus graculus,_ L.), and the horned pheasant (_Meleagris Satyra,_ L.). In this month insects are scarce, _Elater_ and a black earwig being the most frequent: two species of _Serica_ also flew into my tent, and at night moths, closely resembling European ones, came from the fir-woods. The vegetation in the, neighbourhood of Lamteng is European and North American; that is to say, it unites the boreal and temperate floras of the east and west hemispheres; presenting also a few features peculiar to Asia. This is a subject of very great importance in physical geography; as a country combining the botanical characters of several others, affords materials for tracing the direction in which genera and species have migrated, the causes that favour their migrations, and the laws that determine the types or forms of one region, which represent those of another. A glance at the map will show that Sikkim is, geographically, peculiarly well situated for investigations of this kind, being centrically placed, whether as regards south-eastern Asia or the Himalayan chain. Again, the Lachen valley at this spot is nearly equi-distant from the tropical forests of the Terai and the sterile mountains of Tibet, for which reason representatives both of the dry central Asiatic and Siberian, and of the humid Malayan floras meet there.