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56. Recent Plant Immigrants. 
By Prof. Paut Brtun, Engineering College, Sibpur. 
Part I.—Croron sparsircorus, Morung. 
About four or five years ago, the author noticed a species 
of Croton establishing itself along the foreshore road in front 
of the Engineering College, Sibpur. He found himself unable 
ibpur, but was informed by o the assistants in the 
Herbarium of the Sibpur Botanical Gardens that Colonel Prain 
had discovered the plant a few rs previously growing near 
Diamond Harbour and other places in the Sunderbans ; and from 
some sheets preserved in the Herbarium: it appeared that: 
Colonel Prain had identified it with Croton sparsiflorus, Morung.: 
On those sheets it is stated that Croton sparsiflorus had been first 
described in the Journal of the New York Academy of Sciences, 
1893, vol. VII, page 227. Colonel Prain had meanwhile left the 
country, and the writer’s search for the journal in the libraries of 
the Botanic Gardens and the Asiatic Society proved unsuccess- 
ful; he finally ciioaaht himself of that refuge of the despairing 
searcher after scientific literature, the library of the Geological 
the Government of India 
The following is a detailed i AEN of the plant as it 
grows in the vicinity of Sibpur 
Croron sparstFLorus, Morung. 
Anundershrub; when in flower from shout 8 cm. (or even 
less) to 80 cm. high (about 3 in. to 3 ft.); full-grown on suitable 
soil and isolated, forming bushes of Pac a A spherical 
outline; but when "growing in a crowded condition, assuming a 
more or less straggling habit. Faintly fragrant. 
t tap-root, rather woody, slender conical, little 
branched, of larger specimens up to 50 cm 
branched from near its base; stouter branches woody; bark 
greyish-brown. Twigs green, with mostly elongated lenticels, 
tubercled and ‘pale-striated ; upwards longitudinally ridged and 
grooved, and rather densely beset ivan small white stellate hairs 
distributed chiefly along the ridge 
Leaves scattered, more fa crowded near the tips of the 
branches below the inflor escences, alternate, near the tips nearly 
ite or whorled, petioled ; petiole to} the length of the 
Hea semiterete to nearly terete, grooved above, stellately hairy, 
