TEE BILL FORESTS OF WESTERN INDIA. 671 



value as health-resorts to their pleasant woods and abounding under- 

 growth of beautiful shrubs and flowering plants and ferns which 

 everywhere keep the ground cool and the air sweet and fresh. Both in 

 climate and in splendour of wild woodland scenery they furnish an in- 

 structive contrast with those hills of the same tract' which have suffered 

 from the destruction of forests in the manner I have already described. 

 An account of the Forest Flora of Matheran and Mahableshwar will 

 apply generally to similarly preserved portions of the Western Ghats 

 and the adjoining regions. Their vegetation is not indeed identical. 

 Dr. Theodore Cooke, in his valuable note on my Catalogue on the Hill 

 Flora of Matheran and Mahableshwar, published in Vol. X of the 

 Society's Journal, has estimated that, exclusive of grasses, about 140 

 flowering plants are found at Matheran, which have not been seen at 

 Mahableshwar, and 130 at Mahableshwar which have not been seen at 

 Matheran. In the preface to the Catalogue I have shown that some of 

 the conditions which regulate the distribution of plants are not equally 

 operative at both places, and will not here repeat what I have there 

 said. I have also there pointed out that, after full account is taken of 

 all divergences, many plants are found to be common to the two hills, 

 and that such a coincidence is favoured by the practical indentity of 

 their geological formation and by the circumstance that there 

 is no great difference in the range of their mean temperature 

 at different seasons and in their rainfall. A marked similarity is indeed 

 apparent in the general outward forms of vegetation on the two hills 

 due to the frequent presence of the same characteristic plants on both. 

 Everywhere at Mahableshwar as at Matheran, we find the Myrtle 

 tribe represented by endless woods of the beautiful Jambul tree, 

 LEugenia jambulana), the Melastomas by the Anjan or Ironwood 

 {Memecylon edule), the Laurels by the Pisa (Lifsce Stocksii), and the 

 Madder tribe by the thorny Gela (Randia dumdonim). There is the 

 same undergrowth of shrubs and herbaceous plants, the natural orders 

 of" Leguminosae," *' Acanthacese" and " Compositae " being specially 

 and numerously represented, and there are many showy climbers, trail- 

 ers and creepers, and orchids and ferns common to both hills. 



It is interesting to note that, of the 733 names included in the 

 Catalogue, about 125 are the names of trees or sub-trees, as distinguish- 

 ed from shrubs, creepers, grasses, ferns and undergrowth generally. Of 



