420 Capt. N. Vicary^s Notes on the Botany of Sinde. 
XLIV. — Some Notes on the Botany of Sinde. By Captain N. 
ViCARY, 2nd European Regiment*. 
The following notes have been made from plants_, collected under 
considerable difficulties, at seasons (Dec., Jan., Feb.) the worst 
that could be selected for collecting plants, or when I was accom- 
panying an army in an enemy^s country, with scarcely the means 
of transporting my private baggage. I mention this merely to 
show that much remains to be done of botanical interest in Sinde, 
and that my collection gives but a limited, although a charac- 
teristic idea of the plants that flourish in that region. The flora 
of Sinde falls naturally into three divisions, that of the hills, the 
plains, and the coast. The hills, being either the bases or out- 
liers of the Hala range, are barren in the extreme, owing to the 
want of rivers, the rareness of natural springs, their saline nature 
where they do exist, and the absence of periodical rains. 
Little that could be called soil exists ; a few of the intervening 
valleys only are favoured with arable land. 
The hilly country generally presents a most desolate and bar- 
ren appearance — little vegetation meets the eye — scarcely any- 
thing but the bare, broken, pale or rusty yellow tertiary strata 
of which they are composed. My Beloch guides informed me 
that rain at a proper season falls on an average about every fourth 
year, that shortly afterwards vegetation appears abundantly, and 
that on those occasions the Beloehees are in the habit of collect- 
ing and storing dried grass ; at such seasons the botanist would 
doubtless find much to excite attention, but at any time the few 
plants found are very interesting. 
A species of palm is very abundant in this division, near 
springs and lining the banks of water-courses. If not new, I be- 
lieve it to be Chamcero'ps humilisy but I have seen neither flowers 
nor fruit. The tree has scarcely any stem above ground ; the 
leaves are flabelliform, and the petioles channeled with lacerate 
stiff margins. The denuded and dry spadix of one tree which I 
saw was about six feet high, with numerous lateral branchlets. The 
Beloehees make sandals of the leaves of this tree. A Viola is 
found near water-courses, nearly allied to, if not identical with, 
V. 'patrinii. 
A species of Reaumuria, with leaves diff’ering somewhat from 
the described kinds, also exists on the tops of some of the lower 
hills. This, and a Scrophularineous plant { Antic ha?'is)y are the 
most ornamental plants found in the Lower Halas. 
A Gi'ewia, allied to G. sapida, forms small shrubs rising from 
the fissures of the rocks ; its small red berries are eatable. 
* From the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for Nov. 1847. 
