160 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



Mountains between the two will serve for a prolongation of our 

 eastern boundary, and may fairly be protracted through the western 

 branches of the Vindhyas to the tropic of Cancer. 



This last makes an excellent northern limit to a province which 

 has none precisely defined by nature; and it happens, too, to coincide 

 very well with the northernmost limits of British Gujarat ; aud the 

 points at which the rugged country to the east and the plains to the 

 west begin to show the characters in man, beast, and soil of Raj- 

 putana. The Deccan trap in the hills begins here to give way to 

 other formations -, and the plains assume more and more the charac- 

 ter of the Indian Desert. I am aware that some naturalists have 

 recently included the Deesa region, and even country much further 

 north, as Gujarat — chiefly, it would seem, because the Bombay Army 

 has garrisons there. An ideal boundary for an ornithologist would 

 perhaps be the death -scene of the northernmost Painted Francolin 

 and southern green pigeon [Croco'pus chlorigaster) ; but the tropic is, 

 on the whole, the best boundary, and coincides pretty closely with 

 those of native geography and ordinary English conversation. 



To the west of Gujarat proper lie the Peninsulas of Kattywar 

 and Kutch, which, in geology, flora, and fauna, may be assigned 

 to the desert region, with the south-western parts of the Ahmeda- 

 bad District such as Gogo, where we get tertiary fossils on Piram 

 Island. To the south of these lies a shallow and sandy sea, pro- 

 longed, east of them, into the Gulf of Cambay. In the rains, when 

 the great and little " Rans " of Kutch fill and communicate with 

 the " Nal " of Viramgaum, and this again with the Gulf, no doubt 

 the fleets of the Royal Canoe Club might circumnavigate them to this 

 day. 



Gujarat pi'oper, as I have defined it, has two very well marked 

 regions. Under the hills it is broken and wooded, drained by 

 small rocky streams which run nearly dry in the hot weather. In 

 the extreme south, indeed, there is no marked line between Gujarat 

 and the Konkan, but here begins a plain, which gradually widens, 

 between the wooded hill country and the sea. The rivers, 

 especially those rising in the western ghats, resemble (while in 

 the rough ground) the streams of the Konkan. But at Surat we 

 come upon the Tapti and at Broach upon the Nerbudda, both 

 members of the second class of Indian rivers and already great 

 perennial streams when they enter this province. North of these we 

 have the Mahi and Sabarmati — streams far inferior to them, but 



