THE FLORA OF PANCIIGANI. 317 



nnrivalled." It is, indeed, the flowers that give a special charm 

 and attraction to that isolated hill. It is, however, not the artistical or 

 poetical side of the flora that we are concerned with, and in order 

 to destroy every illusion in the reader's mind as to the character of 

 our paper, we shall hegin with a dry comjiarison of the flora of Fan- 

 chffani with that of Mahableshwar. 



Except in the east and extreme north the top of Mahableshwar is 

 wooded to the very edge of the scarp, and though only in a few shel- 

 tered glades are there trees of any great size, the wood is so dense 

 that it forms one vast waving stretch of rich foliage, broken by the 

 varieties of shade from the olive leaf of the Pisa to the blue-green of 

 the Jumbul and other fruit-bearing trees. The deep-cut roads and 

 paths are bordered by a thick undergrowth of bracken and shaded by 

 moss-covered trees. Panchgani, on the other hand, shares the fate of 

 the other hills of Satara District in being very scantily wooded. It is 

 only the village itself that is hidden in a forest of exclusively cultivated 

 trees, mostly Casuarinas {Casiiarina equisetlfolia) with their dark green 

 branches and Silver Oaks (Grevillea robusta) with their light-green 

 foliage ; but, for the rest, we seldom meet a fine tree, and there are 

 only a few places where nature made an attempt to form a jungle. 

 Only in one place she succeeded, i. e., on the north-western slope of 

 the hill below the Mahratta Well. As a natural consequence, the 

 crypto gamic flora is very poorly represented. Mosses do not grow in 

 such abundance as at Mahableshwar, and are mostly found on the 

 ground or on rocks. The few species of ferns form a feature of the 

 landscape only in some places, and even there they are not develop- 

 ed in such a profusion and luxuriance as at Mahableshwar. Westward 

 from Panchgani, in the direction of Mahableshwar, for about five 

 or six miles, where the rainfall appears to be moderate, the vegeta- 

 tion does not show any marked changes ; but more westerly still, 

 where the rain tall is excessive, the flora becomes altered, ferns and 

 bulbous plants abounding. Are these difierences in the develop- 

 ment of the flora entirely due to the difi'erences in rainfall and 

 humidity observed on the two hills ? If so, we might ask a further 

 question : Jsthe low amount of rainfall at Panchgani the result of 

 deforestation in former centuries ? Perhaps some other time we shall 

 be able to answer these questions. 



Panchgani, small though it is, does not show a uniform vegetation 



