316 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISr. SOCIETy, Vol. XXV. 



for the botanist, as no collections have ever been brought home from that 

 region. There have been travellers passing through that country, yet bota- 

 nical science has not profited by them. We know a good deal about the 

 flora of British Baluchistan {i.e., British Baluchistan proper, the Agency 

 Territories, and the Native States of Kalat and Las Bella). William Griffith 

 Superintendent of the Hon. East Indian Company's garden at Calcutta, was 

 the first to collect in Baluchistan. In November 1889, he joined the Army 

 of the Indus in a scientific capacity, and penetrated, after the subjugation 

 of Kabul, bayond the Hindu Kush into Khorasan, whence, as well as from 

 Afghanistan and Baluchistan, he brought collections of great value and 

 extent. In 1843 a book appeared entitled " Narrative of a Journey to 

 Kalat," written by Masson, a surgeon. It contains numerous botanical 

 references but on the whole it is more the book of an adventurer than of a 

 botanist. The second botanist who visited Baluchistan was Dr. J. E. 

 Stocks. In 1848, he crossed the Hab River and reached Shah Bhilawal. In 

 1850, he made another and longer trip into the country via Shikarpur and 

 the Gundava Pass to Kalat, Quetta and Nushki. Between 1877 and 1880 

 extensive collections were made by Doctors O. T. Duke and Hamilton. 

 Their plants were preserved at the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta. A few 

 years later (1884-1885) we find Dr. J. E. Aitchison attached to the Afghan 

 Delimitation Commission. He collected between Quetta and the Helmand 

 river along the northern border of Baluchistan, and his results are em- 

 bodied in the " Botanji- of the Afghan Delimitation Commission," which was 

 published in the Transactions of the Linnean Society. Of more recent 

 botanists who increased our knowledge of the Baluchistan flora we must men- 

 tion J. H. Lace who was stationed in that country from 1884 to 1888 as Deputy 

 Conservator of Forests, besides, J. S. Duthie, at the time Director of the 

 Botanical Department of Northern India. He collected chiefly near Quetta 

 on a visit to Baluchistan in 1888 ; and finally Lieut.-Colonel F. P, Maynard 

 who, in 1896, accompanied the Baluch-Afghan Boundary Commission as 

 medical officer. The results were published by I. H. Burkill and D. Prain 

 in the records of the Botanical Survey of India (1897). Whatever in the 

 way of publications, or specimens had been contributed towards the botanical 

 exploration of Baluchistan during a period of 70 years, was collected and 

 examined by I, H. Burkill and published in his "Working List of the 

 Flowering Plants of Baluchistan" (1909). His final conclusion is that ''the 

 flora of Baluchistan is Persian in character, and very much less northern 

 than that of Afghanistan -, but it is northern enough to contain a violet, a 

 primula, the English hawthorn, an anemone, a gentian, a juniper and plants 

 of many genera familiar in north-western Europe." 



So far we possess a fair knowledge of the country lying east of Persian 

 Baluchistan. Much less is known of the parts adjoining it on the west, 

 namely, of Persia proper. In the Northern Provinces of Gilan, Mazanda- 

 ran, and Astarabad on the Caspian, from the shore to an altitude of about 

 3,000 ft. on the northern slopes of the great mountain range which separates 

 those fjrovinces from the high lands of Persia, the flora is similar to that of 

 the Mediterranean region. At higher altitudes many forms of a more 

 northern flora appear. As v/e approach inner Persia, the flora rapidly 

 makes place to steppe vegetation in the plains, while the Mediterranean 

 flora predominates in the hills. The steppe vegetation extends in the south 

 to the outer range of the hills which separate inner Persia from the Persian 

 Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Beyond this outer range and along the shore 

 of the sea, the flora is that of the Sahara region which extends eastwards 

 to Sind. 



1 need not point out that the conclusion arrived at by Burkill applies to 

 the flora of Baluchistan as a whole, and it is easy to see what the verdict 



