Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Part II Physical Science 1876

3 group are forest-clad from the bottom to the top the forests on the nortern group are restricted to the plutonic rocks and to the slopes and dells of the older alluvium while the hilly plateaux and ridges are covered with park-like grass-heaths. [...] As the climate is a tropical moist one identical with that of most Malay islands and the elevation of the hills too small to affect vegetation the influence of the soil naturally becomes more conspicuous and marked. [...] Owing to the smallness of the rivers and to the consequent narrowness of river-alluvium the variety of.these forests distinguished by me as tidal forests' is not developed although localities are met with on the banks raised above tidal mark which partake of the same character. [...] The tropical forests occupy a large (say about one-third of the whole) area of the islands of the northern group while they are so greatly developed in the southern group as to leave only a small fraction for the other forests (mangrovand beach-forests). [...] Diedriebson occupy the hillocky plateaux of most of the islands of the northern group and aro physiologically equivalent to the 1g low forests of Pegu more especially with that variety of them in which the trees are more scattered.