18 BENGAL PLANTS. 
has been left by Roxburgh and Carey for succeeding generations of 
botanists to add; indeed, these careful collectors have left us not a 
few records of species, found by them in Central Bengal, that no 
one has met with since. 
The remaining portion of Bengal proper stretches westward 
from the Bhagirati and the Hughli to the eastern base of the 
ur ghats. i i 
Behar, 
the eastern ghats of Chota Nagpur, with all the transitions 
encountered as we pass southward through Behar to the northern 
edge of the same table-land. e owe to many collectors, but 
find, growing side by side, a few species characteristic of the 
Panjab and Rajputana that have managed to find their way 
through Bandelkand and Behar thus far to the east; and a few, 
equally characteristic of Coromandel and the Circars, that have 
succeeded in spreading, through the lowlands of Orissa and Mid- 
napur, thus far to the north. One of the most interesting members 
of the latter category is, perhaps, the intrinsically insignificant 
monotypic genus Spheromorphea. Our acquaintance with the 
southern portion of this tract is of the slightest; but for some 
references by Roxburgh to interesting species from the ‘ Midnapur 
jungles,” it would be altogether blank. Having regard to the 
composite nature of West Bengal as a botanical province, and to — 
the fact that its alluvial rice-plain is neither very extensive nor at 
all distinctive, the province has not been cited in the list under 
oc 
collected, to the west of the narrow semi-aquatic rice-plain, in the 
non-alluvial portion of the province. s 
The artificial sexual system of classification, of which a sub- E 
