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THE FLORA OF THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY. 

 (STATISTICO-BTOLOGICAL NOTES.) 



BY 



E. Blatter, s. j. 

 (With Plate A.) 



In the first volume of the Imperial Gazetteer of India, J. I), 

 Hooker gives a short sketch of the Flora of British India, He 

 divides the whole area into nine botanical regions which are deter- 

 mined by the number of species of the ten largest Natural Orders in 

 each region. As I shall very often, in the following, compare the 

 Flora of Bombay with the vegetation of other areas, I consider it 

 necessary to acquaint the reader with Hooker's botanical divisions. 

 The nine regions are — 



1. The Eastern Himalayas, extending from Sikkim to the Mishmi 

 mountains in Upper Assam. 



2. The Western Himalayas, extending from Kumaun to Chitral. 



3. The Indus Plain, including the Punjab, Sind, and Rajputana, 

 west of the Aravalli range and Jumna river, Cutch, and 

 Northern Gujarat. 



4. The Gangetic Plain, from the Aravalli hills and Jumna river 

 to Bengal, the Sundarbans, the plains of Assam and Sylhet, and 

 the low country of Orissa north of the Mahanadi river. 



;">. Malabar in a very extended sense — the humid belt of hilly or 

 mountainous country extending along the western side of 

 the Peninsula from Southern Gujarat, the southern half of 

 Kathiawar, the Konkan, Kanara, Malabar proper, Cochin, 

 Travancore, and the Laccadive Islands. 



6. The JDeccan in a broad sense : that is, the whole comparatively 

 dry elevated table-land 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 as the Coromandel Coast. 



7. Ceylon and the Maldive Islands. 



8. Burma, bounded on the N. and N.-E. by the flanking moun- 

 tains to the south of the Assam valley and China, on the east by 

 China and Siam, on the west by Bengal and the Indian Ocean, 

 and on the south by the State of Khedah in the Malay Peninsula. 



