In the Himalaya, the truly temperate vegetation supersedes the subtropical above 4000 feet, and ascends to 12,000 feet, when it is succeeded by the alpine.
India contains representatives of almost every natural family on the globe, a very few American, Australian, and S. African orders of plants being the chief exceptions. In India the number of peculiar families largely represented in it is very limited. The Aurantiacete, Dipteracem, Balsam inem, Ebenacem, Jasmineu, and Cyrtandracete are the only orders which are largely developed in India, and sparingly elsewhere, and of these few contain a hundred Indian species. Sir Joseph Hooker is bringing out a descriptive work on the flora of India.
The species are much scattered. It is believed that nowhere in British India could more than 2000 flowering plants be found in a radius of 10 miles ; and there is in India an almost complete absence of absolutely local plants. The plains of India are everywhere poor in species, and such as abound in individuals are usually of a weedy character. Indeed, there are few other countries in which the vegetation of the more accessible parts presents so little beauty or such short seasons of bloom. The great number of 222 British plants extend into India. Many North African and Arabian forms occur. Several Australian species are found in the Malayan Peninsula. Many of the Himalayan, Neilgherries, Khassya, and Ceylon species are found in the Malay Peninsula and in Java. Gualtheria nummularia extends from the N.W. 'Himalaya to the Java mountains; and plants common to India and Java are Sedgwickia cerasifolia, Grill., Marlea, Cardiopteris lobata, several oaks and chestnuts, antidesmem, a willow, and Myrica. The Chinese type is abundant in the temperate region of the Himalaya; and plants of N. America, west of the Roe •y Mowrtains, also occur.
Au immenso proportion of annual plants, which vegetate on tho last rainy seasons in the plains, and ascend the lofty mountains, are uniformly distributed throughout India. Of these the most conspicuous are cyperacem, a vast number of small leguminosn and scrophu larina, courposiue, some labiatm, amaranthacex, convo1vu1aceai, and acanthace:e.
The winter months of the colder northern countries have a corresponding cold season in India, during which ex-tropical cereals, wheat, barley, and more rarely oats, with various kinds of pulse, are cultivated; and many wild plants appear, very many cyperacc c, grasses, and such arinatics as myriophyllum, potamogeton, vallis ueria, zamrichellia, zemna, and others. The
mountainous regions of Afghanistan are rich in lliuralayan forms, and contain an immense number of European and Persian plants, which find their eastern limits within the British hlirnalaya ; and many plants are found in those mountainous regions common to Europe and the Himalaya. Nepal, Bhutan, East Tibet, and the Khassya mountains present a flora which has much in common, and, in a geographico-botanical point of view, is one of the most important regions in India, if not in all Asia. In the Himalaya, the genera rhododendron, monotropa, pedicularis, corydalis, uepeta, carex, spiraea, primula, cerasus, lonieera, and viburnum attain their maximum of develop ment.
In the Himalaya the truly temperate vegetation supersedes the subtropical above 4000 to 6000 feet, an elevation at which there generally is an annual fall of snow.
On the Himalaya, and on the isolated moun tain ranges of the Peninsula of India, on the heights of Ceylon, and on the volcanic cones of Java, many plants occur, either identically the same or representing each other, and at the same time representing plants of Europe not found in the intervening hot lowlands. A list of the genera collected on the loftier peaks of Java raises a picture of a collection made on a bill in Europe. Still more striking is the fact that Southern Australian forms arc clearly represented by plants growing on the summits of the mountains of Borneo. Some of these Australian forms extend along the heights of the Peninsula of Malacca, and arc thinly scattered, on the one hand, over India, and, on the other, as far north as Japan. Along the Himalaya, at points 900 miles apart, glaciers have left the marks of their former low descent; and in Sikkim Dr. Hooker saw maize growing in gigantic ancient morasses. There are plants on the Himalaya and Neilgherries, Ceylon, and the Khassya mountains, and in the Malay Peninsula, and the moister and moro equal parts of India, identical with those of Java. The genus calamus, orchids, araeeae, zingibcracca:, and ferns are especially abundant; the genus grammatophyllum, the wonderful nepcnthacea, or pitcher plants, of which solitary species occur in Madagascar, Ceylon, the Seychelles, Celebes, and the Moluccas.