FROM UPPER BURMA AND THE SHAN STATES. 3 
features of the physical characters of the country and the 
aspects of the vegetation. 
Concerning the plants from the plains of Upper Burma little 
need be said. Griffith and Wallich collected in the neighbour- 
hood of Ava fifty years ago, and there are not many novelties 
from this region—the plants being chiefly of the same species 
discovered by those botanists, yet often valuable, because afford- 
ing better material of obscure species founded upon imperfect 
specimens. 
The general character of the flora of Lower Burma is suf- 
ficiently well known from the researches of Kurz, Parish, and 
other botanists, but it differs widely from that of Upper Burma, 
due to the very different climatal conditions prevailing in the two 
regions. In Lower Burma the annual rainfall is seldom much 
short of 100 inches, and it nourishes a purely tropical vegetation ; 
whereas in the wide and arid plains which form the greater 
part of Upper Burma the rainfall diminishes to a yearly average 
of about 30 inches, and the general aspect of the vegetation 
bears a striking resemblance to that of the dry plains of the 
Deccan in Southern India. 
The Shan Hills and Plateaux. 
We have here to deal with a more interesting and novel area, 
which had never before been botanically explored, and which has 
yielded, even in the partial collections now under review, a re- 
markably large number of new and interesting plants, amounting 
indeed to about 12°5 per cent. 
The petty provinces comprising the territory known as the 
Shan States, or Shan Hills, extend along the entire eastern 
frontier of our Burman possessions, from the Chinese province 
of Yunnan on the north and north-east to Siam in the south; 
and consist, speaking broadly, of several distinct ranges of hills, 
rising in occasional peaks to a height of 6000 or 7000 feet, and 
running north and south, enclosing elevated plateaux of from 
3000 to 4000 feet above the sea-level. The Shan States are 
divided for administrative purposes into Northern and Southern; 
and it is the latter division with which we are immediately con- 
cerned, as it is almost exclusively in this area that the present 
collection of plants was made. 
The States may be roughly defined as comprised between the 
B2 
