VARIATION IN INDIGOFER A SUMATRANA, GAERTN. 47 



VARIATION IN IN DIG OFEBA SUMATBANA, GAERTN., AS 

 INDUCED BY CLIMATIC CONDITIONS. 



By H. M. Leake, M.A., F.L.S. 



The plant which is cultivated throughout Northern India on account of 

 the indigo-yielding property which it possesses is Indigofera sumatrana, 

 Gaertn.* It may be found under cultivation throughout a large portion of 

 the Indo-Gangetic plain. Met with as far west as Dera Gazi Khan and 

 Sukkur in Scind, on the west bank of the Indus, it occurs throughout the 



Fig. 4 Cawnpur Plant. 



Punjaub and North- West Provinces into Behar in Bengal. It is, how- 

 ever, in these latter districts that the headquarters of the industry are 

 situated. Here the cultivation is in the hands of a European planting 

 community, to help whom against the competition of the German 

 synthetic product, scientific assistance has only recently been employed. 



Preliminary inquiries which, on first reaching Behar, were instituted 

 with a view to discovering what line of biological work promised to yield 

 the most fruitful economic results, revealed at least one astonishing fact, 

 namely, that, almost without exception, the planter is totally ignorant, not 

 only of the locality from which comes the seed with which he particularly 

 is supplied, but of the more general fact as to where indigo is grown to 

 * Prain and Baker, Journal of Botany, Feb. 1902, p. 65. 



