I.—INTRODUCTION. 7 
endeavour has therefore been made to limit the references to such 
species of this class as are commonly planted in village gardens, or 
are to be found in the neighbourhood of temples and shrines. e 
method adopted has, doubtless, sometimes led to the mention of 
species that, on the eclectic principle stated above, might have 
been omitted; and has in other cases failed in the direction of 
as it does,—with the exception of the district of Darjeeling, or 
nae nae Me 
riti 
Governor of B 
comprising the north-eastern portion of India proper, and lying 
between long. 84° and 93° E., lat. 22° and 27° N. The region 
is bounded throughout on its northern border by the lower spurs 
of the Himalayas. Its western boundaries are, approximately, 
the Gandak and the Son rivers, streams that find their way into 
the Ganges near the eighty-fifth meridian—the former from Nepal 
to the north, the latter from the highlands of Central India to the 
south. Its southern boundaries are, in the western half, approxi- 
mately the river Mahanadi, which flows from Central India east- 
ward to the Bay of Bengal; in the eastern half the Bay of Bengal 
itself. The eastern side is much more irregular ; its boundaries 
are, in the northern third the river Brahmaputra; thereafter, more 
to the east as well as to the south, the river Megna; in the southern 
half and, still more to the east, the Lushai Hills, which are the 
northward prolongation of the Yomah of Arracan. 
A line roughly coincident with the eighty-seventh meridian, 
naturally marked to the north of the Ganges by the river Kosi 
and to the south of the Ganges by the eastern base of the Chota 
Nagpur plateau, divides our area into two fairly equal halves: 
a western drier and an eastern moister half. This line is also 
roughly coincident with that which separates the area receiving 
e y inches of rain annually, from that which receives fifty 
inches or over. The country to the west of the line is that charac- 
terized by an annual turf as opposed to the perennial turf of the 
