Universities and colleges of West Bengal College, Calcutta. These institutions played a significant role in what came to be known as the Young Bengal Movement and the Bengal Renaissance. La Martiniere Calcutta was established in 1836. The oldest medical school in Asia, the Calcutta Medical College was set up in 1835. In 1857, the University of Calcutta was established as the first full-fledged multi-disciplinary university in south Asia. It was modelled on the lines of the University of London. Today it is amongst the largest multidisciplinary universities of India and offers some of the widest number of academic disciplines for study. John Bethune established a school
Tourism in West Bengal which is 13.38% of the state's geographical area, compared to the national average of 21.02%. Part of the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, is located in southern West Bengal. The southern part of West Bengal can be divided into two regions: the Gangetic plain and the littoral mangrove forests of the Sundarbans. The coastal region of Purba Medinipur exhibits coastal vegetation. A notable tree from the Sundarbans is the ubiquitous "sundari" ("Heritiera fomes"), from which the forest gets its name. The distribution of vegetation in northern West Bengal is dictated by elevation and precipitation. For example, the foothills of