144 THE JOUENAL OF INDIAN BOTANY. 



not allow me to say very much ; but certain general conclusions 

 may be drawn from an examination of the very full and careful 

 descriptions of the flowers given by Kuhland in his monograph. 

 It might be supposed at the outset that since the plants grow in 

 water and marshy ground their seeds would be carried on the feet 

 of migrating birds, and that this, coupled with the universally 

 accepted similarity of the conditions of water and marsh tbe world 

 over, would result in a very wide distribution of most of the species. 

 Some certainly are scattered widely, but the majority seem to be 

 confined to comparatively small areas. This question is of course 

 bound up with that of the limits of the species : thus E. Sieboldianum 

 Sieb ot Zucc, aj understood by Hooker in the F.B.I., occurs all over 

 S. E. Asia from Bombay to Japan and N. Australia ; but Euhland 

 separating from it several smaller species gives to them a much 

 narrower distribution, though he retains almost as wide a one for 

 E. Sieboldianum itself. Of the groups which I have proposed in this 

 account the SETACE^j group has one representative, E. bifistulosum 

 Van Huerck, in West Africa and probably others elsewhere. The 

 jglMPLICES being all those with no special modification of the floral 

 parts are no doubt primitive and world-wide. The HIRSUTE and 

 ANISOPETAL^I are spread over S. Eastern Asia from Cochin to China, 

 probably on the mountains of the warmer parts, and the latter seem to 

 have a second centre of distribution in British Guiana. The CRISTATO- 

 SEPAL^ also seem to have a centre in tropical South America, 

 reaching from Mexico to Brazil. But the CONNATO-SEPALAE, which 

 have in India only one representative on the Himalayas, belong almost 

 entirely to China and Japan. Of the LEUCANTHERAE one species, E. 

 Sieboldianum Sieb. et Zucc, is widely spread over tropical S. E. Asia, 

 Malaya and Australia, but the others seem confined to India. E. Sie- 

 boldianum is probably ."the most widely distributed of all the species, 

 and E. Brownianum Mart, with its varieties (or related species of Euh- 

 land) covers almost as wide an area. 



Inside India there appear to be on the plains and lower hills no 

 species at all north of a line from Mt. Aboo to Dacca, and not many 

 northwards on the Himalayas, though there are one or two in Kash- 

 mir. They occur all over South India. The hirsutae belong 

 almost entirely to the mountains above 3,000 ft. of Burma, Bengal, S. 

 India and Ceylon, but extend far southwards to Singapore. The ANI- 

 SOPETALAE are developed chiefly in Ceylon, with one species in Ben- 

 gal, one in the Central Provinces and the Deccan and another on the 

 Niligiris ; but not curiously enough collected hitherto on the Palnis 

 which are nearer Ceylon and floristically show closer affinities. Of 

 the CRISTATO-SEPAL2E the smaller species belong to the Western 



