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ZONES AND REGIONS [Pt. Ill, Sect. I 



several ' Floras ' the data bearing on this question for individual species. 

 Only works that are founded on local experience extending over a number 

 of years can be utilized ; in others, one will usually find that month given 

 as the flowering period in which particular specimens happened to be 

 collected. However, the occasional use of such collectors' data in part 

 of the works that I have used is not excluded ; but Brandis' data in his 

 Forest Flora of North-West and Central India may be accepted with 

 absolute confidence ; Koorders and Valeton also, the editors of a Tree- 

 Flora of Java, now coming out in parts, have paid critical attention to 

 this question. Besides these works, the three published volumes of 

 Trimen's Flora of Ceylon and Schomburgk's catalogue of the Flora of 

 Guiana have been utilized. In all these works, the favourable influence 

 of the dry seasons on the development of flowers could be most clearly 

 recognized. The flowering time of most of the species, and especially, for 

 reasons already given, that of woody plants, coincides with the end of 

 the dry season and the very commencement of the rainy season. 



Koorders and Valeton's work promises when completed to afford the most 

 important material for investigating the connexion between the flowering time 

 and the season of the year, on the one hand, because of the care with which the 

 data were collected, and on the other, because differences of temperature are of 

 no concern in Java. So far, therefore, as the climate in Java influences the 

 flowering time, it can act only by differences in the atmospheric precipitations. 



Of 228 species whose flowering time is given, in 53 species it is uniformly dis- 

 tributed throughout the year, in 12 it commences in the wet season (December 

 to March) and continues into the dry season ; therefore in 65 species, or about 

 29 %, atmospheric precipitations have no decided influence on the flowering time. 

 In 142 species, or about 63 %, the flowering time is limited to the dry season 

 (April to November), either entirely or for the most part. Only about 18 species, 

 or not quite 8 %, blossom solely during the rainy season. 



The annexed table gives a summary of these data: — 



CLIMATE AND FLOWERING TIME IN JAVA. 



The district dealt with in Brandis' book is less instructive, because, especially 



