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94 THE JOUKNAL OF INDIAN BOTANY.

of trees confined to the Malwa region are the only links with Indo-Malaya. A. noteworthy feature is the abundance of Graminese and Cyperacese, which together total 148 out of the 614 species.

This work adds twenty-two truly wild and three alien species to the Bombay flora, and establishes as genuine indigenous species ten which are excluded in Cooke's work. Thus thirty-five species may be said to have been added to the flora. In addition to this our knowledge of distribution of other species within the Presidency has been materially advanced.

Part II deals with the cecology of the district. The authors have accept- ed Warming's analysis of the world's flora as a basis upon which to work, and have considered that the great bulk of the area discussed belongs to his class 10, Psilophytes. In Warming's use of the word this term is equivalent to savannah. The woodland savannah consists of the Teak Tectona grandis. Bael Aegle marmelos, Morinda citri folia, Odina wodier and other trees familiar to botanists on the other, eastern, side of India, along with shrubs like Helicteres isora, Carissa carundas, HularrJiena antidysenterica and Nyctanthes arbor-tristis- The ' thorn-savannah ' in the same way consists largely of Zizyphus cenoplia, Z. jujuba, Gymnosporia montana, Cassia auriculata, Capparls seiAaria and others, all common enough on the dry hills of S. India.

As regards other associations, the flora of open sheets of water such as ' tanks,' and the slow moving rivers (Hydrophytes), and also that of their banks (Helophytes) are both very similar to those of similar situations in the Carnitic— Nymphcax lotus, Hydrilla verticillata, Trapa bispinosa, Jusstaa repens and Nilalla sp. in the water : Herpestis Mouniera, Lippia nodiflora and Marsilia quadrifoliata on their banks, to mention only a few. The dried mud such as one finds in dried tanks also bears very similar vegetation to that of Madras— the Babul Acacia arabica being abundant, and prostrate herbs like Coldenia procumbens, Chrozophora plicata, Mollugo hirta and Polygonum plebejum. The Mesophytic flora is, on account of the general dryness of the country, distinctly poor; and only two examples are noted by the authors where the ground was kept permanently moist, one by a tank, the other by a spring. Nearly all the plants given are such as occur in similar places in South India.

The authors have added some notes on the associations of cultivated lands, with a list of the common weeds and hedge-plants. In North Gujarat the hedge is a much more important feature than in other parts of India and harbours a definite and not uninteresting flora. Their list comprises the trees and other woody plants, the climbers, and the small herbs : and they dis- tinguish them according to the degree of commonness or rarity, and the clim- bers according also to their habit of the roots or lower portions.

This oecological part is, perhaps, the first instance of such work in India, and the example will, it is to be hoped, be followed in other parts of this country.


Histology.

Beer, R. and Arber, Agnes. On the occurrence of Multinucleate Cells in Vegetative Tissues. Proc. Boy. Soc. B. 91 ; B. 635 p. 1. (Aug. 1919)

That multinucleate cells occur occasionally in plants has been known ever since the days of Naegeli, but chiefly in connection with specialised