414 Herbarium of the Calcutta Botanic Garden. [No. 5. 



culty on the spot, and thus to avoid the necessity of sending them 

 to England for comparison. 



In a country like India, where the distribution of plants is regu- 

 lated so completely hy the climate, it is most important that botan- 

 ists wherever situated should devote themselves to the complete 

 elaboration of the plants of the district in which they reside, and 

 that they should, if possible, combine careful meteorological observa- 

 tions, especially of the humidity, with their botanical labours. It is 

 only thus that the exceptional cases (if there be any) of plants 

 whose distribution is independent of the climate, can be speedily 

 eliminated. 



To the philosophical botanist who is desirous of investigating the 

 laws by which the distribution of plants is regulated, no flora in the 

 world is more interesting than that of India, though it is in point of 

 numbers of species a very poor flora, when compared with Australia, 

 south Africa, or the continent of South America, to all of which 

 nature has been liberal to profusion in richness and variety of 

 vegetable forms. The interest of the Indian flora lies in the absence of 

 new forms, in the identity of its plants with those of other countries, 

 in the occurrence of European plants on our western mountains, of 

 Japanese plants in the Eastern Himalaya, of Chinese plants in our 

 dense eastern forests, of a purely Egyptian flora in Sindh, of a Poly- 

 nesian flora in Malaya, and of numerous Africau types in the moun- 

 tains of the Madras peninsula. It may interest Indian botanists, for 

 whom especially this little paper is intended to give a slight sketch of 

 the different floras which co-exist within the limits of British India. 



Disregarding for a moment the Malayan Peninsula, British 

 India may be described as an equilateral triangle with sides 1,500 

 miles in length, the apex advancing far within the tropics, the 

 base in the hotter part of the temperate zone. The tropical por- 

 tion of this triangle is traversed by ranges of hills of moderate ele- 

 vation, most lofty toward the south, where they rise above 8,000 

 feet, less lofty in the north where the average height of the ridges 

 is not more than 4,000 feet. "Within the temperate zone, the level of 

 the surface is much lower, and it is there occupied by the basins of 

 two great rivers, the Indus on the west and the Ganges on the east. 

 JSouth of the tropic this large triangle is every where surrounded by 



