I.—INTRODUCTION. 11 
and the Hughli, in Western Bengal, we find, especially towards 
the south, an extension of the features that characterize Central 
engal. The strip of alluvial semi-aquatie rice-land is, however, 
comparatively narrow, and along the drier parts of West Bengal, 
from Burdwan to Midnapur up to the eastern edge of the Chota 
Nagpur plateau, we find repeated the features encountered between 
the Ganges and the northern slopes of that table-land. These 
characters are all continued southward into Orissa, where the low- 
lands are only an extension of Western Bengal, and the highlands 
are continuous with those of Chota Nagpur. Between the sea an 
the alluvial portion of Orissa, which is rather extensive, especially 
in the valley of the Mahanadi, we do not, however, experience 
that transition to a mangroye-swamp which ¢ ‘acterizes Central 
Bengal, but meet instead, both to the north and again to the south 
of the Mahanadi delta, with a series of sand-dunes interposed 
between the rice-plain and the sea-face. 
he inner highlands of Orissa are forest-clad like the ghats that 
lead up to their eastern edge; further west they become bare, or 
are only sparsely forest-clad. The same is true of the eastern 
edge of the Chota Nagpur plateau; the northern edge of that 
plateau and the table-land itself where not under cultivation are 
sparsely clad with a forest that, like the forests of Orissa, in 
appearance and largely in composition resembles those of Central 
India, rather than the forest met with in Northern Bengal. 
Some of the loftier peaks, both in Chota Nagpur and in Orissa, are 
sufficiently high to more humid near the top than they are 
lower down, and therefore possess a few species characteristic of a 
nearly temperate moist climate. 
The forest on the isolated hills already alluded to as charac- 
teristic of the northern portion of the alluvial area to the east of 
the Brahmapuira and the Megna, where they constitute the 
such species as are to be found in Chota Nagpur, without occurring 
under the Himalayas, than it has of such species as are met ith 
under the Himalayas, but not in Chota Nagpur. There are, how- 
ever, present in these low hills an appreciable number of species 
