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FLOWERING SEASON AND CLIMATE. 



By 



E. Blatter, S.J. 



Part I. 



{With 3 Plates.) 



(Read before the Bombay Natural History Society on 2Slh June 11)06.) 



In popular and, sometimes, even in scientific books we find so many 

 different opinions as regards the flowering season in the tropics, that it 

 seems to be worth while to inquire into the real facts in order to trace 

 the laws by which the processes in the sexual sphere are governed. 

 There are writers who say that there is scarcely any periodicity in the 

 flowering time in the tropics, whilst others speak of well defined periods. 



In the following essay I shall not discuss all the factors which in- 

 fluence the development of flowers, but I shall confine myself to 

 discovering the relations which exist between the flowering season and 

 the olimate. For this purpose I examined the floras of different 

 regions of India, Burma, and Ceylon, collecting notes which give infor- 

 mation as to the flowering period of the vegetation, and comparing 

 them with the meteorological data of the respective areas. 



I shall begin with the Presidency of Bombay, the flora of which 

 has been describad by various botanists in former years, and. recently 

 by Th. Cooke in his ''Flora of the Presidency of Bombay." I 

 borrow the following passage from the preface to Cooke's Flora, 

 where the author gives a short description of the area covered by his 

 botanical explorations : " The Presidency of Bombay," he says, "in- 

 cluding Sind and Baroda (which latter State, containing 4,400 square 

 miles, though removed in 1875 from the administrative control of the 

 Government of Bombay, is, for botanical purposes, included within the 

 limits of the Presidency) extends from 13 c 53' to 28 D 47' N. hit. and 

 from 60° 43' to 76° 30' E. long., and contains about 196,000 square 

 miles, an area more than 1| times that of Great Britain and Ireland. 



'" To the north of the Tapti river, which passes the town of Surat, 

 stretches the flat alluvial and fertile plain of Gujarat, much of it 

 without a hill to break the monotony of the landscape for miles. 

 Sind, still further to the north-west, separated from Baluchistan by the 

 Kirthar mountains which sometimes rise to a height of 7,000 feet, is 

 much of it a plain of desert sand with occasional ridges of low sand-hills. 



