ECONOMIC BOTANY OF SCINDE. 547 
No. LXXVII. Round box for keeping jewels or any little 
articles. The coloured lac is put on in layers (sometimes four or 
five distinct and differently coloured ones); and various patterns 
are produced by cutting down to the layer of the particular colour 
you wish to show out. The wood is Populus Euphratica, Béhôn 
or Ban-wood of the Scinde forests. The lac is Scinde. 
No. LXXVIII. Scinde lac—found on Acacia Arabica and Zizy- 
phus Jujuba. 
No. LXXIX. Jognee, or seed lac. 
No. LXXX. Kalamdan, or Scinde Pen-box, of the lacquered 
Hydrabad work.—The material is paper—the lac comes from the 
forests. The ink is made of lamp-black and Scinde gum. The 
pens are the stem or culm of Saccharum spontaneum, Roxb., very 
common in Scinde. The boxes they make in Affghanistan are 
very curious; the Cashmere ones are very beautiful; but the 
Persian ones could not be surpassed by the best Parisian artists. 
The Scinde ones are so-so. In the box is an inkstand, pens, cakes 
of ink, paper-cutters (i. e. native scissors), penknife, and bone- 
scoop to put water (when wanted) or ink (when fresh made) into 
the inkstand.—N. B. This pen-box is a very common affair, and 
such as a dandy Moonshee would be ashamed of. He would have 
a beautiful Kandahar or Herat-box, a silver inkstand, ornamented 
pens, &c. but it is sent as a specimen (entirely) of what Scindees 
make and use.—I may offer the same remark on other articles. 
Leather. oe 
The tanners of Kurrachee are good ones, and the hides go 
to Arabia and. Affghanistan in large quantities. They are a 
low and despised caste, and live far from the town. Their tan- 
yards are well worth seeing—a business like manner they have, 
and a freedom from the sluttish way in which most Scindian manu- 
factories are conducted. They take the hair off the hides 
with common salt and the acrid juice of the Us or Calotropis pro- 
cera, which grows in vast abundance near them. In Kurrachee 
they use the Kunro bark, Rhizophora mucronata, which is brought 
from the Delta of the Indus, mixed a /ittle with the bark of the 
Kirruree or Chowree (Ceriops Candolleana). They seem to avoid 
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