THE VEGETATION OF THE DISTRICTS OF 
I 5 0 
Bengal. The same is true of a considerable portion of the 24-Per- 
gunnahs from the river Hughli eastward and southward to a line 
running roughly from Mud Point north-westward to Basirhat. The 
large irregularly triangular slice of territory bounded on the west by 
the Hughli from Saugor light-house to Mud Point and from Mud Point 
to Basirhdt by the arbitrary line just mentioned, on the east by the 
Raimangal river, and on the south by Bay of Bengal, which com- 
pletes our area, forms the western portion of the Sundribuns. 
The Hughli- Howrah districts, with the exception of the Goghat 
sub-division west of the Dwarkeswar, and the non-Sundribun por- 
tion of the 24-Pergunnahs may be taken together. They form part 
of Central Bengal and are typically representative of the great 
alluvial rice-plain of the Gangetic delta. The only natural high 
ground is along the banks of the main streams, and the only other 
high lands met with are the more or less artificial patches around 
villages and towns and the obvious mounds and embankments thrown 
up around ponds and along canals, or as means of communication by 
road or rail. 
The greater portion of the area is under cultivation, all the low 
land being under rice-^cultivation. Along the banks of the chief 
waterways where these are under tidal influence, we find a narrow 
hedge, or scattered patches of species that are characteristic of the 
Sundribun region, while on the mounds or embankments that have 
been artificially raised, and in the immediate vicinity of most villages 
and towns, we find groves and thickets of trees and shrubs, many of 
them subspontaneous only, a large proportion of them more or less 
economically useful, and a considerable number of them natives of 
countries other than India. 
There is nothing that could possibly be termed genuine forest in 
the whole of this area, though in the north-eastern corner of Hughli 
in the Balagarh thana there is a certain amount of jungle including 
genuine forest trees as apart from the trees more characteristic of 
village and suburban shrubberies. Along the Damodar river there 
extends to the west a narrow strip, five or six miles wide, which is 
heavily flooded during every rainy season and is mostly uncultivated. 
This tract, which begins two or three miles west of the river bank,— 
for a narrow band along the western bank of the Damodar is highly 
cultivated during the cold weather — is under coarse grass and is 
practically uninhabited. In a few localities, where places formerly 
inhabited have been abandoned, as for instance, on the site of 
Satgaon, a little jungle, approaching to a true forest in character and 
appearance, may be met with. 
