During the winter, when these families repair to Kambajong, in Tibet, the flocks and herds are all stall-fed, with long grass, cut on the marshy banks of the Yaru. Snow is said to fall five feet deep at that place, chiefly after January; and it melts in April. After tea, I ascended the hills overhanging the Lachen valley, which are very bare and stony; large flocks of sheep were feeding on them, chiefly upon small tufted sedges, allied to the English _Carex pilularis,_ which here forms the greatest part of the pasture: the grass grows mixed with it in small tufts, and is the common Scotch mountain pasture-grass (_Festuca ovina_). On the top of these hills, which, for barrenness, reminded me of the descriptions given of the Siberian steppes, I found, at 17,000 feet elevation, several minute arctic plants, with _Rhododendron nivale,_ the most alpine of woody plants. On their sterile slopes grew a curious plant allied to the _Cherleria_ of the Scotch Alps, forming great hemispherical balls on the ground, eight to ten inches across, altogether resembling in habit the curious Balsambog (_Bolax glebaria_) of the Falkland Islands, which grows in very similar scenes.* [_Arenaria rupifraga,_ Fenzl. This plant is mentioned by Dr. Thomson ("Travels in Tibet," p. 426) as common in Tibet, as far north as the Karakoram, at an elevation between 16,000 and 18,000 feet. In Sikkim it is found at the same level. Specimens of it are exhibited in the Kew Museum. As one instance illustrative of the chaotic state of Indian botany, I may here mention that this little plant, a denizen of such remote and inaccessible parts of the globe, and which has only been known to science a dozen years, bears the burthen of no less than six names in botanical works. This is the _Bryomorpha rupifraga_ of Karelin and Kireloff (enumeration of Soongarian plants), who first described it from specimens gathered in 1841, on the Alatau mountains (east of Lake Aral). In Ledebour's "Flora Rossica" (i. p. 780) it appears as _Arenaria_ (sub-genus _Dicranilla_) _rupifraga,_ Fenzl, MS. In Decaisne and Cambessede's Plants of Jacquemont's "Voyage aus Indes Orientales," it is described as _Flourensia caespitosa,_ and in the plates of that work it appears as _Periandra caespitosa_; and lastly, in Endlicher's "Genera Plantarum," Fenzl proposes the long new generic name of _Thylacospermum_ for it. I have carefully compared the Himalayan and Alatau plants, and find no difference between them, except that the flower of the Himalayan one has 4 petals and sepals, 8 stamens, and 2 styles, and that of the Alatau 5 petals and sepals, 10 stamens, and 2-3 styles, characters which are very variable in allied plants. The flowers appear polygamous, as in the Scotch alpine _Cherleria,_ which it much resembles in babit, and to which it is very nearly related in botanical characters.]