566 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
at his own expense. It is only those who know how Dr. 
Wight is situated, who can fully appreciate the difficul- 
ties he has had to contend with in effecting what he has 
towards the elucidation of the Botany of the Southern 
parts of India. Living upwards of three hundred miles from 
Madras, where the lithography and printing are executed, 
and much of his time being occupied with professional en- 
gagements, it is astonishing that he has been able to ac- 
complish so much. It is now his intention to resume the 
publication of his * Illustrations of Indian Botany," of which 
the last part was the first portion of the second volume. 
Having at last completed the determination of the Ceylon 
Collections, and the selection of an immense number of 
duplicates from Dr. Wight's Indian Herbarium, I left 
Coimbatore, on the 13th of April, to return to Ceylon vid 
Cochin, on the Malabar coast. The Malabar country i$ — 
far more fertile than the Carnatic, and covered with fine — 
forests, similar to those on the West coast of Ceylon, a 
difference no doubt caused by the great quantity of rain 
which falls during the S.W. Monsoon. Some of the forests 
I passed through were almost entirely composed of magnifi- 
cent Teak trees. At Trichoore, a native town about fifty 
miles from Cochin, I remained two days with the officer who 
commands a detachment of the Madras Native Infantry now 
stationed there, and during that time had an opportunity of 
seeing a very splendid native festival It was under the 
auspices of a brother of the present Rajah of Cochin, and 
not less than 10,000 people were calculated to be present, 
among whom were only four Europeans. In this grand 
procession, I saw about fifty elephants, all in gorgeous 
trappings of silver and gold, and on the back of each 
stood several half-naked Bramins, waving large fans made 
of the tail-feathers of peacocks under the canopy of large 
umbrellas of crimson silk. Among the immense mass of 
human beings here assembled there was neither rioting 
or fighting; a strong proof of the gentleness of their. 
disposition; nor did I observe more than half a dozen in 8 
