10 BENGAL PLANTS. 
the Bhagirati and the Hughli is of this character; while the same 
features are continued into Eastern Bengal, where they become 
exaggerated in the Jhils, a tract wholly under water during the 
rains, and only partially dry in the cold season. The marshes that 
in the cold weather stretch away from the river-banks, which stand 
a few feet above the mean level of the flooded country, are covered 
with rice. In the rains they form an almost unbroken inland sea 
of fresh water, dotted with islets of matted floating grasses. The 
banks themselves carry a fringing fence of brush-wood. As we pass 
‘southward from Central Bengal these features become equally 
exaggerated, but in a different manner, in the area of the Sundri- 
buns within which the influence of the tides is felt. Here the 
whole is covered with a dense forest of those trees peculiar to 
mangrove swamps, and in its western half finally ends at the sea- 
face in a fence of the shrubs and climbers characteristic of all 
Indo-Malayan coasts. The eastern half of the Sundribun coast- 
the fresh-water marshes of the Jhils, is characterized by the 
presence of many low hills, islets of laterite rising slightly above | 
the plain of alluvial soil, usually densely forest-clad; the trees at 
their bases mixed with tall grass, higher up their slopes tangled 
with heavy creepers. 
Immediately to the south of the Ganges, from the Son eastward ; 
to the Bhagirati, the features met with north of the river continue 
unchanged, though the country as a whole is drier, the cultivation — 
is less extensive, the bush-jungle more plentiful and closer, the 
groves of palms near villages larger. As we pass further south 
the country becomes diversified with numerous bare, low hills, and 
the intervening jungle becomes more park-like. The level or nearly 
level plain is much narrower than the corresponding tract to the 
north of the Ganges, and rapidly passes into a submontane forest 
altogether similar in character to, and largely identical in com- 
position with, the corresponding tract at the foot of the Himalayas. 
This forest extends up the slopes that lead to the edge of the table 
land of Chota Nagpur. Immediately to the west of the Bhagirati 
: 
2 
