INDIA 39 



atmospheric humidity continues to remain high. Of 

 peninsular India, this stretch of coast-land, at most fifty 

 miles broad and rising in abrupt scarps at the back, is 

 the only one which admits of high tropical rain-forests. 

 These forests, albeit they do not attain the luxuriance of 

 the selvas of south Sumatra, display a great exuberance 

 and all the essential features of the typical rain-forest. 

 The hot and wet region of Malabar is continued into 

 south-western Ceylon, where the character and profusion 

 of the equatorial belt are further emphasized, and the 

 coco-nut palm forests are famous. 



In the north-east of India, the mountain forests of the 

 Arakan-Assam system, as well as those of the south- 

 eastern Himalayas, exhibit a wet evergreen, but distinctly 

 sub-tropical, type, with a great wealth of forms. The 

 admixture of leaf -shedding vegetation is fairly strong, 

 and trees of a more familiar aspect, oaks, pines, and 

 magnolias, are abundantly represented. Here tea is as 

 profusely grown as in southern China. The north-eastern 

 mountainous region of India, which is also the region of 

 heaviest rainfall in the world, is most appropriately com- 

 pared with the middle belt of the Montana at the head 

 waters of the Amazon. 



A cross-section cut through the south-eastern portion 

 of the Himalayas would show a lower tropical belt, 

 about twenty miles broad, rising from the plains to 

 1,000 feet, of loose forests (chiefly of sal-tree) and rich, 

 swampy jungles and grasslands, with enormous bambus 

 and tall palms. 



The sub-tropical belt, which reaches an altitude of 

 6,500 feet, presents the wet, evergreen aspect, but includes 

 trees of a familiar type, such as pines and live oaks, 

 celtis, olive-trees, sumacs, and others. 



A temperate zone of non- coniferous, largely deciduous 



