BOTANICAL INFORMATION, 315 
tion of Malabar, and which Dalzell is working out) in a southern direc- 
tion, we miss Canara, Coorg, Mysore, and the Malabar coast, where 
many, many things are new, and yet wait a botanist, despite of Wight’s 
industry. The forests here (as far as I have seen them as yet) are not 
the dense and dark ones which clothe the Malabar Ghauts, where one 
can only walk or creep, not ride or drive, and where the heavy rains 
breed a rank under-jungle, and where the Teak and Blackwood, and 
- scores more trees, grow giants in stature. The Concans here are pain- 
fully cultivated even up to the hill-tops, and the annual burning of the 
jungles, and the consumption of branches for wood-ashes for manure, 
have in many parts made the country as bare as one can imagine. I 
understand however that it is rather better in Mulwan, where Dalzell is, 
and also in some deep forests, called the ** Dangs," between Surat and 
Kandeish, If in parts of the Concans there are still left slender spars 
of Teak (which by care and permission will doubtless attain a respect- 
able size) we must thank Dr. Gibson, and his measures. If the Concan 
is thus bared by cultivation, what can we say of the Deccan, which is 
just the hills of Scinde, plus a monsoon rain annually? Hence a stunted 
carpet of vegetation; hence rills of water below the high hills; but the 
hills bleak, brown, and bare, now in April and May, and decidedly no 
rank vegetation anywhere, but a dry climate and hot winds, and lots of 
Acacias. But between the undulating and narrow strip of the Concans 
and the table-land of the Deccan are the Mawul districts, just beyond 
(or east of) the ridge of the Ghauts, where the dryness of the atmo- 
sphere is less, the plants are more green, the water is more abundant, 
and some forest yet left on the hill-sides (slowly but steadily disappear- 
ing however under the cultivator). Here we may get a few things: Ma- 
hableshwur (4500 feet), whose plants you doubtless know, is in the 
Mawul country, and Dr. Gibson knows of other lofty hills, near Jooneer 
(Hurrychunda, ete.), which may yield a few things. But I fancy that 
up the Nerbudda, towards Jubblepoor, in parts of Kandeish, in parts of 
Central India, and especially, of course, on the Malabar coast, we may 
meet with many good things, and I mean, within the next three years 
(D. v.), to try them; but not much in Bombay Presidency Proper. 
I am liable to correction in all this, and I hope also to show you 
that a few scattered novelties remain, having been seen by many, but 
unheeded. Thus, for example, the Rhabdia you figured in your * Icones’ 
has haunted me from Bulsar in North Concan, to Rutnagherry in South 
