1922.] Indian Science Congress. L.$.C. 109 
down root activity. In India we see small plants losing their 
piration, as the dry season advances. Excessive transpira- 
tion may also explain why the trees of the Peninsular forests 
lose their leaves along through the winter and spring ; but it 
offers no explanation of why the new flush of leaves comes 
out and remains on the trees before the beginning of the mon- 
soon, when conditions are at their severest. This new angle 
of the problem should be attacked. 
Practically nothing that I know of has been done with 
the distribution of roots and perennating organs in a monsoon 
climate. Do they behave as the roots of desert plants, as des- 
cribed by Cannon !, or as the perennating organs described 
by Warmine’, and others? This can be answered only by 
pecially of the characteristic rainy seas season 
floras.2 In addition, we should have information as to the 
ti the organs of storage, and the time and methods of 
lems should yield to histological and microchemical studies. 
The anatomical response of plants to the periodic climate 
is another problem. Work has been done in the West com- 
paring the anatomy of the same species in different habitats, 
but Hanson * has shown that there is equal or greater dififer- 
ence in the leaves from different locations on the same tree 
than has previously been reported from different habitats. 
n the aspect and content of ee ‘vegetation in 
e know 
tion during the winter ; and a relatively small group 5 persis- 
tent xerophytic perennials during the spring; but we should 
Such studies would apply equally to the whole range of eryp- 
togams. It is here especially that taxonomic studies are 
i er 

! Cannon, W.A. The Root Hobite - — Plants. Carnegie In- 
2 pean oF - Fash ton Pub. No. 131. 
= ae Om Jord fey ‘Kel Danske. Selsk, Skrift, 
Vatury. og Mathem. VIII: 2: 297-878. 1918 
’ Dastur, R. H. and W. T. SEXTON. ae 
-Osgweaiageed in Crotalaria burhia, Ham. Ne be 
o98 — This paper hasa ppeard since the above was written. 
nson, H.C. Leaf structure as related to environment. 
Jour, Bot, 4: 533-560. 1917. 
