PLANTS OF NORTHERN GUJARAT. 
214 
interesting plants would have to be excluded, and also because, whereas 
in the rest of the area we get sand passing into stony hills, in 
Kharaghoda we get sand passing from sweet to completely brackish. 
Kharaghoda is about the same distance from Ahmedabad as Modasa, 
and though we have not worked the intervening country it would add 
little to our list. 
' 
4, Climatic Conditions . 
The climate of our area is characterised by the combination of a 
comparatively heavy but brief monsoon with a long, and normally 
completely rainless, dry season, culminating in an intensely hot summer. 
There is no part of India in which the rainy season is shorter. The May 
thunderstorms of the Deccan are absent, and the retreating monsoon 
period ceases much earlier than it does further south. The influence of 
the north-east monsoon is, of course, nil, while the winter depressions 
that pass over North India affect us only in temperature, wind and cloud, 
but give no precipitation. Thus any rainfall, say, from the 5th October 
to the 31st May is entirely abnormal, and the amounts put down in the 
table below for that period represent not regular light showets but very 
occasional cyclones passing along abnormal paths. Such abnormal 
rainfall cannot modify the character of a regional flora, which has to 
accommodate itself to normal conditions. Consequently, rain in winter 
or spring either has no effect, or only an adverse effect, resulting in 
rapid fall of seed, or blighting of flowers. 
The average? rainfall for the years 1876-1902 * was as follows 
Civil Hospital, 
Prantij. 
Modasa. 
Ahmedabad. 
January to May 
• t 
. 026 
0*66 
0*54 
June 
« 
• i 
4-66 
645 
6*08 
July 
• 
• •; ;■* >-■ 
10-84 
12-26 
12*03 
August . 
• 
1 * 
. 8*58 
8’ 63 
866 
September 
« 
• - 9 
6*31 
569 
6-99 
October 
• 
Ml ryO It 3 in 
• *< 
0*51 
0*25 
0-21 
November co 
December . 
T C y i iT 
031 
0’28 
0-33 
Total . 
31-37 
3302 
3374 
Thus there is a slight but perceptible increase from south-west to 
north-east, the increased precipitation at Prantij and Modasa being 
probably due to the proximity of the hills already described. At Khara- 
ghoda the annual rainfall is about 24 inches only and indeed at the 
ftann semi-desert conditions begin to set in. Humidity is high in July 
and August and diminishes until March, when the air is intensely dry. 
# From the latest edn, of the Statistical Atlas of the Bombay Presidency, 1906. 
