390 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FLORA OF NORTH 



COIMBATORE. 



(FROM MATERIALS SUPPLIED BY C. E. C. FISCHER, I.F.S.) 



BY 



E. Blatter, s.j. 

 ( With a Map— Plate A.) 

 Mr. C. E. C. Fischer is known to the readers of our Journal by 

 his valuable " Notes on the Flora of Northern Ganjam 3 " in which he 

 gave us a list of over 800 indigenous plants. Early in 1905 he was 

 transferred to Coimbatore. Here he made an extensive collection 

 of plants in the northern part of that District and gathered notes on 

 the elevation and flowering time of the single species. It is to be 

 regretted that, in April 1907, he was called to Dehra Dun to replace 

 temporarily Mr. Stebbing as Professor of Entomology. Before 

 leaving Coimbatore, Mr. Fischer offered me his notes, with the 

 intention of giving me further materials towards the elucidation 

 of the relations between flowering season and climate. I shall, with 

 pleasure, make use of his notes ; but I have been considering, at 

 the same time, what Hooker and Thomson complained of half a 

 century ago : " We have long deplored the defective geographical 

 nomenclature adopted in almost every work treating of the Natural 

 History of India, and the fact that ' E. Ind.' or ' Ind. Or.' is con- 

 sidered in most cases sufficiently definite information as to the native 

 place of any production found between Ceylon and Tibet, or Cabul 

 and Singapore. 2 ' This important defect has been remedied to some 

 extent during the last 30 years, but, still, our information with regard 

 to the exact distribution of the different species in India is far from 

 being complete ; and it is especially the Deccan of which so little 

 is known in this respect that it is impossible to describe the limits and 

 botanical characters of the sub-regions in a satisfactory way. 3 In 

 order to contribute a little to our knowledge in this direction, I asked 

 the Editors of our Journal to publish the whole, though incomplete, 



1 Cf. Vol. XV., p. 537 ; Vol. XVI, p. 473. 



2 J. D. Hooker and Thomas Thomson : Flora Indica, Introductory Essay, p. 2, (1S55). 



3 •' Deccan " is taken in a very broad sense, as laid down by J. D. Hooker in his sketch 

 of the Flora of British India, i.e., " the whole comparatively dry elevated table-laud of the 

 Peninsula east of Malabar and South of the Gangetic and Indus Plains, together with, as a 

 sub-region, the low-lying strip of coast land extending from Orissa to Tinnevelly, known 



the Coromandel Coast.'' — Cf. Imperial Gazetteer, Vol. I, new edition, p. 136. 



