i8 9 6. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 367 



here very dangerous to man, the buffalo, the axis-deer, and a 

 rhinoceros are characteristic larger animals. All are quite at home 

 in the water. The tiger swims long distances, and there is a wonder- 

 ful story of an elephant which, carried one night out of sight of land 

 by a north-wester, swam all next day, and the following morning 

 brought his mahout, nearly dead with thirst, safe to land. Mr. 

 Clarke does not think the presence of the larger animals in England 

 an a priori proof of a former land-connection with the Continent. 



The greater part of the paper is, however, devoted to a con- 

 sideration of the geographic distribution of the characteristic vegetation 

 of the district, and gives a most instructive lesson to workers in 

 systematic botany. There are sixty-nine species, about one-sixth of 

 the whole flora, which grow in the Soondreebun, but not in the 

 Bengal plain for 100 miles outside the Soondreebun. These 

 characteristic plants are here tabulated so as to show their distribu- 

 tion in longitudinal areas east and west of the district. The tables 

 show that the range of all the sixty-nine is continuous, each plant 

 being found in every intermediate area between its extreme eastern 

 and western limits. Thirty-two species extend to China, the same 

 number to the Pacific Islands, but only eight to America, among 

 which are the only six found in the Sandwich Islands. Eighteen 

 plants extend westwards to Mascarenia, and fourteen to the east 

 coast of Africa. The number of species in common is found to 

 diminish regularly as we get further from the centre. . Of the 69 

 plants selected, 53 occur in Burma, 45 in the Malay Peninsula, 43 in 

 Malaya, 32 in Tropical Asia, and so on; and a similar relation would, 

 it is suggested, result if the characteristic plants of Hampshire were 

 selected and their distribution similarly represented in the maritime 

 counties from Kent to Cornwall. Not the least value of Mr. Clarke's 

 address is in the emphasis he lays on the results to be obtained by 

 working with a few well-defined easily recognised species rather than 

 from a comparative tabulation of whole floras. " An investigator 

 should look round well (before commencing an inquiry) to discover 

 the simplest case, that in which he may observe and record the 

 action of the smallest number of causes acting at the same time. 

 This is a commonplace remark : chemists understand the principle 

 very well ; but I think biologists require reminding that human 

 industry is limited, and that their zeal, great as it is, ought only to be 

 expended in the most economic manner." 



Ehret. 

 As an appendix to the same issue of the Linnean Society's Pro- 

 ceedings, is a memoir of the famous flower painter, George Ehret, 

 translated by Miss E. S. Barton from his own MS., now kept in the 

 Botanical Department of the British Museum, where are also a 

 number of his drawings. Ehret was born at Heidelberg in 1708, and 

 spent a large portion of his life as a working gardener. His story is 



