i6 
THE VEGETATION OF THE DISTRICT OF 
Hooker in his recent sketch of the flora of British India written for 
the Imperial Gazetteer, and they are defined by him as follows: — 
I. - — The Indus plain includes “ the Punjab, Sind, Rajputana west 
of the Aravalli range and Jumna river, Cutch and Gujarat.” 
II. — The Gangetic plain extends “ from the Aravalli hills and 
Jumna river to Bengal, the Sundarbans, the plain of Assam, 
the low country of Orissa north of the Mahanadi river.” 
III. — The Deccan includes “ the whole comparatively dry elevated 
tableland of India east of Malabar and south of the Gangetic 
and Indus plains, together with the Coromandel coast.” It is 
practically what is meant by u Peninsular and Central India ” 
in the list of species in this paper. 
The respective proportions of the collection furnished by the 
three zones of the district are approximately : — 
Arracan-Nwamadaung plants . 4^6 per cent. 
Desert zone plants . . . 8*4 „ „ 
Alluvial belt plants . . . 46*0 ,, ,, 
This, however, in all probability does not represent accurately 
the true percentage of the three zones. The writer, as already men- 
tioned, had to be content with the merest glimpse of the Arracan 
Yomahs, and as it is much easier to collect specimens on the plains 
than to climb up very steep slopes in search of them, there is little 
doubt that the native plant collector distributed his energies accord- 
ingly. It is for instance incredible that seven species of orchids are 
a fair representation of the prevalence of that order in the Arracan 
Yomahs. It is therefore not inadmissible to assume that, if the Arracan- 
Nwamadaung zone were as fully botanized as the other two zones 
have probably been that the percentage of the former element 
in the vegetation of the district would rise considerably and the per” 
centages of the latter two correspondingly fall. Further it is exceed- 
ingly probable that a considerable number of species collected in the 
alluvial belt also occur in the desert zone, but were not re-collected 
In the latter for the reason that they had been already collected in 
the alluvial belt. Consequently it must not be forgotten that the 
figures given are at best but a mere approximation to the true pro- 
portions of the various elements in the flora of the district. 
Considering the vegetation of the zones in more detail we find that 
the Arracan-Nwamadaung zone shows a distinct endemic element — 
amounting to about 5 per cent, of the species collected in that zone- 
restricted to the Assam-Arracan sub-sub-area. Most of the species 
comprising this endemic element are new or presumably new and are 
