318 £HE JOURNAL OF INDIAN BOTANY. 



animals to dense oval bushes (Fig. 13). It is only when the bushes 

 finally spread out so wide that the animals cannot reach the center 

 that shoots spring up into trees. The thorn scrub is destroyed only 

 by cutting combined with cultivation ; cutting alone does not destroy 

 it, for all the species coppice freely, and most of them propagate by 

 shoots from roots. Where cutting is restricted, the Zizyphus jujuba 

 and Acacia arabica develop into a very fair forest (Fig. 15). 



As might be expected, there are no bulbous plants, and no 

 epiphytes in the thorn scrub. There are a few lianas, the most com- 

 mon being species of Asclepiadaceae, notably Bemklesmus indicus Br. 

 Where there is more protection, as in planted groves and in hedges 

 around orchards, Cocculus villosus DC, Tinospora cordi/olia Miers. 

 Vitis trifolia L., and a number of Cucurbitaceae are common, but 

 they are unable to survive unrestricted grazing. The parasite, Guscuta 

 rejicxa Roxb., is very common, and whileoccurcing most frequently on 

 Acacia arabica and Zizyphns jicjioba, it is able to grow impartially on 

 almost any available host plant. 



Seasonal succession is not such a conspicuous feature of the 

 thorn scrub, though it is well shown in the dry meadow herbaceous 

 vegetation that extends over all such areas. Periodicity is prominent 

 only in leaf fall and in time of blooming. Many of the species are 

 deciduous and have their flowering period during the hot season. 



There is little doubt that the meadows of the grass farms and 

 the thorn scrub woody vegetation belong to the same general stage in 

 topographic succession. The former are shrubless and treeless because 

 of the thoroughgoing annual cutting, the wooded areas lack the more 

 advanced grasses because of overgrazing. If left undisturbed, both the 

 protected meadow grasses and the thorny shrubs and trees together 

 would very completely occupy most or all of the area now covered by 

 dry meadows, and would become a dense thorn forest. This actually 

 is happening in the Fisher Forests at Etawah, 200 miles to the west 

 of Allahabad. This is an area along the Jamna Eiver recently placed 

 under Government supervision for afforestation experiments. It is a 

 series of deep ravines developed as the result of the removal of the 

 soil-holding vegetation by overgrazing and unrestricted cutting for 

 fuel. With only five years protection, both the grasses and the woody 

 plants of the thorn scrub stage have developed luxuriently (Fig. 12). 



Nowhere over the area about Allahabad has the vegetation been 

 able to develop without protection beyond a poor display of the thorn 

 scrub trees and shrubs, and most of the area is in the dry meadow 

 stage. This stage, so conspicuous under existing conditions, prob- 

 ably would be but a short stage following the wet meadow, or 

 it might even not occur as a distinct stage at all, if the vegetation 



