ON THE FLORA OF CUTCH. 



761 



Bnuj Thermometer Readings in 1904, showing the Mean Monthly 



Of the two factors, rain and temperature, the latter seems to exercise 

 very little modifying influence upon the seasons in the vegetative 

 and sexual life of the plants. It is mainly the water that awakens 

 the slumbering seeds from their dry and apparently lifeless grave ; 

 and if the country is barren and devoid of forests and jungle, we shall 

 find the cause of it in the want of rain. This becomes evident from 

 the fact that, when even a little rain falls, grasses and herbs quickly 

 spring up, and that plains and hills rapidly change colour, especially 

 in the trappean area. If cloudy weather follows, sufficient pasture is 

 obtained for the herds upon which the inhabitants mainly depend for 

 their subsistence. On the other hand, in ordinary dry seasons the plains 

 resemble deserts. Heavy sand is drifted over them by the wind often 

 into forms imitating the dunes of sea coasts, and the country seems 

 to afford nourishment to little besides numbers of prickly Euphorbias. 

 In cases where the rains are so partial that large tracts receive but a 

 few scanty showers for several years in succession, the country be- 

 comes all but uninhabited, the people with their flocks being forced 

 to look out for subsistence on the irrigated lands of Sind or elsewhere. 



The soil of Cutch is, generally speaking, a light clay, covered with 

 a coarse sand from one to four and six inches deep. Six or eight feet 



