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_),
and erect ones with similar leaves (as cultivated cocoa-nut, _Areca_
and _Arenga_), and the broader-leaved wild betel-nut, and beautiful