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valueless in every way. In fact one can go from Bombay clear 

 up to the Afghan frontier and then down to Calcutta without 

 seeing what he had expected to find on every hand. There is, 

 of course, jungle in India but it is not the typical thing one sees 

 from the car windows. 



In the Punjab and Scinde, huge provinces in the northwest of 

 India, the country is desert or semi-arid, and without irrigation 

 most of the country would be uninhabited. In this region the 

 flora is very similar to that of Arabia and Persia and this con- 

 dition extends clear up to the tops of the first ridges of the 

 Himalaya without being interrupted by tropical rain forests at 

 the foot of the mountains as is the case toward Calcutta. Fine 

 crops of wheat, sugar cane, millet, peas, mustard, etc., are grown 

 in the Punjab, but they are dependent on the two short rainy 

 seasons and on irrigation. The indigenous flora is surprisingly 

 related to that of the great stretches of desert from northern 

 Africa to Afghanistan. The tropical genera which require plenty 

 of rain are not to be found. Only two or three ferns are reported 

 from the Punjab and although there are i,6oo orchids reported 

 from India scarcely half a dozen are to be found in the plains of 

 the northwest. 



The Indian side of the outer ranges of the Himalaya is largely 

 clothed with this desert flora, but strangely enough, the northern 

 side of the first important range is almost entirely different, 

 being clothed with a warm temperate flora right up to the summit 

 so that the tops of the evergreens could be seen plainly from 

 where I lived in Rawalpindi twenty miles away. On the side 

 away from India the forests are much like those in our Eastern 

 States; on the Indian side, there is no true forest, but the trees 

 and shrubs are small and are like those on the plains. 



The names of a few of the Punjab types and of those on the 

 other side of the range will show the contrast. On the south 

 side acacias such as Acacia arabica, catechu and modesta are 

 common. Capparis aphylla, Tamarix gallica, Zizy pints jujuba, 

 Melia Azederach, Albizzia Lebbek and Oka Europea are among 

 the commonest. On the other side, at Murree, a summer resort 

 on the top and slopes of a mountain, overlooking the plain, I 



