common. The elephant is found in the outer forests as far as the
Jumna, and the rhinoceros as far as the Sarda; the spread of both
of these animals as far as the Indus and into the plains of India, far
beyond their present limits, is authenticated by historical records;
they have probably retreated before the advance of cultivation and
fire-arms. Wild pigs are common in the lower ranges, and one
peculiar species of pigmy-hog (Sus salvanius) of very small size
inhabits the forests at the base of the mountains in Nepál and
Sikim. Deer of several kinds are met with, but do not ascend very
high on the hillsides, and belong exclusively to Indian forms. The
musk deer keeps to the greater elevations. The chevrotains of India
and the Malay countries are unrepresented. The gaur or wild ox is
found at the base of the hills. Three very characteristic ruminants,
having some affinities with goats, inhabit the Himalaya; these are
the “serow” (Nemorhaedus), “goral” (Cemas) and “tahr” (Hemitragus),
the last-named ranging to rather high elevations. Lastly,
the pangolin (Manis) is represented by two species in the eastern
Himalaya. A dolphin (Platanista) living in the Ganges ascends that
river and its affluents to their issue from the mountains.
Almost all the orders of birds are well represented, and the marvellous variety of forms found in the eastern Himalaya is only rivalled in Central and South America. Eagles, vultures and other birds of prey are seen soaring high over the highest of the forest-clad ranges. Owls are numerous, and a small species, Glaucidium, is conspicuous, breaking the stillness of the night by its monotonous though musical cry of two notes. Several kinds of swifts and nightjars are found, and gorgeously-coloured trogons, bee-eaters, rollers, and beautiful kingfishers and barbets are common. Several large hornbills inhabit the highest trees in the forest. The parrots are restricted to parrakeets, of which there are several species, and a single small lory. The number of woodpeckers is very great and the variety of plumage remarkable, and the voice of the cuckoo, of which there are numerous species, resounds in the spring as in Europe. The number of passerine birds is immense. Amongst them the sun-birds resemble in appearance and almost rival in beauty the humming-birds of the New Continent. Creepers, nuthatches, shrikes, and their allied forms, flycatchers and swallows, thrushes, dippers and babblers (about fifty species), bulbuls and orioles, peculiar types of redstart, various sylviads, wrens, tits, crows, jays and magpies, weaver-birds, avadavats, sparrows, crossbills and many finches, including the exquisitely coloured rose-finches, may also be mentioned. The pigeons are represented by several wood-pigeons, doves and green pigeons. The gallinaceous birds include the peacock, which everywhere adorns the forest bordering on the plains, jungle fowl and several pheasants; partridges, of which the chikor may be named as most abundant, and snow-pheasants and partridges, found only at the greatest elevations. Waders and waterfowl are far less abundant, and those occurring are nearly all migratory forms which visit the peninsula of India—the only important exception being two kinds of solitary snipe and the red-billed curlew.
Of the reptiles found in these mountains many are peculiar. Some of the snakes of India are to be seen in the hotter regions, including the python and some of the venomous species, the cobra being found as high up as 8000 or 9000 ft., though not common. Lizards are numerous, and as well as frogs are found at all elevations from the plains to the upper Himalayan valleys, and even extend to Tibet.
The fishes found in the rivers of the Himalaya show the same general connexion with the three neighbouring regions, the Palaearctic, the African and the Malayan. Of the principal families, the Acanthopterygii, which are abundant in the hotter parts of India, hardly enter the mountains, two genera only being found, of which one is the peculiar amphibious genus Ophiocephalus. None of these fishes are found in Tibet. The Siluridae, or scaleless fishes, and the Cyprinidae, or carp and loach, form the bulk of the mountain fish, and the genera and species appear to be organized for a mountain-torrent life, being almost all furnished with suckers to enable them to maintain their positions in the rapid streams which they inhabit. A few Siluridae have been found in Tibet, but the carps constitute the larger part of the species. Many of the Himalayan forms are Indian fish which appear to go up to the higher streams to deposit their ova, and the Tibetan species as a rule are confined to the rivers on the table-land or to the streams at the greatest elevations, the characteristics of which are Tibetan rather than Himalayan. The Salmonidae are entirely absent from the waters of the Himalaya proper, of Tibet and of Turkestan east of the Terektag.
The Himalayan butterflies are very numerous and brilliant, for the most part belonging to groups that extend both into the Malayan and European regions, while African forms also appear. There are large and gorgeous species of Papilio, Nymphalidae, Morphidae and Danaidae, and the more favoured localities are described as being only second to South America in the display of this form of beauty and variety in insect life. Moths, also, of strange forms and of great size are common. The cicada’s song resounds among the woods in the autumn; flights of locusts frequently appear after the summer, and they are carried by the prevailing winds even among the glaciers and eternal snows. Ants, bees and wasps of many species, and flies and gnats abound, particularly during the summer rainy season, and at all elevations.
Mountain Scenery.—Much has been written about the impressiveness of Himalayan scenery. It is but lately, however, that any adequate conception of the magnitude and majesty of the most stupendous of the mountain groups which mass themselves about the upper tributaries and reaches of the Indus has been presented to us in the works of Sir F. Younghusband, Sir W. M. Conway, H. C. B. Tanner and D. Freshfield. It is not in comparison with the picturesque beauty of European Alpine scenery that the Himalaya appeals to the imagination, for amongst the hills of the outer Himalaya—the hills which are known to the majority of European residents and visitors—there is often a striking absence of those varied incidents and sharp contrasts which are essential to picturesqueness in mountain landscape. Too often the brown, barren, sun-scorched ridges are obscured in the yellow dust haze which drifts upwards from the plains; too often the whole perspective of hill and vale is blotted out in the grey mists that sweep in soft, resistless columns against these southern slopes, to be condensed and precipitated in ceaseless, monotonous rainfall. Few Europeans really see the Himalaya; fewer still are capable of translating their impressions into language which is neither exaggerated nor inadequate.
Some idea of the magnitude of Himalayan mountain construction—a magnitude which the eye totally fails to appreciate—may, however, be gathered from the following table of comparison of the absolute height of some peaks above sea-level with the actual amount of their slopes exposed to view:—
| Name of Mountain. | Place of Observation. | Height above sea. |
Amount of Slope exposed. |
| Everest | Dewanganj | 29,002 | 8,000 |
| Everest | Sandakphu | 29,002 | 12,000 |
| K2 or Godwin-Austen | Between Gilgit and Gor, 16,000 ft. | 28,250 | |
| Pk. XIII. or Makalu | Purnea, 200 ft | 27,800 | 8,000 |
| Pk. XIII. or Makalu | Sandakphu, 12,000 ft. | 27,800 | 9,000 |
| Nanga Parbat | Gor, 16,000 ft. | 26,656 | 23,000 |
| Tirach Mir | Between Gilgit and Chitral, 8000 ft. | 25,400 | 17-18,000 |
| Rakapushi | Chaprot (Gilgit), 13,000 ft. | 25,560 | 18,000 |
| Kinchinjunga | Darjeeling, 7000 ft. | 28,146 | 16,000 |
| Mont Blanc | Above Chamonix, 7000 ft. | 15,781 | 11,500 |
It will be observed from this table that it is not often that a greater slope of snow-covered mountain side is observable in the Himalaya than that which is afforded by the familiar view of Mont Blanc from Chamonix. (T. H. H.*)
Authorities.—Drew, Jammu and Kashmir (London, 1875); G. W. Leitner, Dardistan (1887); J. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindu Kush (Calcutta, 1880); H. H. Godwin-Austen, “Mountain Systems of the Himalaya,” vols. v. and vi. Proc. R. G. S. (1883–1884); C. Ujfalvy, Aus dem westlichen Himalaya (Leipzig, 1884); H. C. B. Tanner, “Our Present Knowledge of the Himalaya,” vol. xiii. Proc. R. G. S. (1891); R. D. Oldham, “The Evolution of Indian Geography,” vol. iii. Jour. R. G. S.; W. Lawrence, Kashmir (Oxford, 1895); Sir W. M. Conway, Climbing and Exploring in the Karakoram (London, 1898); F. Bullock Workman, In the Ice World of Himalaya (1900); F. B. and W. H. Workman, Ice-bound Heights of the Mustagh (1908); D. W. Freshfield, Round Kangchenjunga (1903).
For geology see R. Lydekker, “The Geology of Káshmir,” &c., Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xxii. (1883); C. S. Middlemiss, “Physical Geology of the Sub-Himálaya of Gahrwal and Kumaon,” ibid., vol. xxiv. pt. 2 (1890); C. L. Griesbach, Geology of the Central Himálayas, vol. xxiii. (1891); R. D. Oldham, Manual of the Geology of India, chap. xviii. (2nd ed., 1893). Descriptions of the fossils, with some notes on stratigraphical questions, will be found in several of the volumes of the Palaeontologia Indica, published by the Geological Survey of India, Calcutta.
HIMERA, a city on the north coast of Sicily, on a hill above the east bank of the Himeras Septentrionalis. It was founded in 648 B.C. by the Chalcidian inhabitants of Zancle, in company with many Syracusan exiles. Early in the 5th century the tyrant Terillas, son-in-law of Anaxilas of Rhegium and Zancle, appealed to the Carthaginians, who came to his assistance, but were utterly defeated by Gelon of Syracuse in 480 B.C.—on the same day, it is said, as the battle of Salamis. Thrasydaeus, son of Theron of Agrigentum, seems to have ruled the city oppressively, but an appeal made to Hiero of Syracuse, Gelon’s brother, was betrayed by him to Theron; the latter massacred all his enemies and in the following year resettled the town. In 415 it refused to admit the Athenian fleet and remained an ally of Syracuse. In 408 the Carthaginian invading army under Hannibal, after capturing Selinus, invested and took Himera
