NOTES ON A CATERPILLAR FARM. 289 



stowed on several sorts of trees besides the Guatteria. So, too, 

 Karunja seems to be used indifferently for a thorny bush with a blue 

 berry and a thornless tree with a flat round pod. While Zizyphus 

 jujuba is called by some a hear, and by others a boar. But the 

 strangest difficulty we had with names was in regard to the cater- 

 pillars themselves. Native opinion seems to be divided as to 

 whether a caterpillar is a centipide, scorpion, spider^ devil, worm or 

 something else. Hence on enquiry in different quarters, we were 

 differently informed that the name of these janwars is saturi, bichu, 

 makra, bhoot, kiri, or kushrun. On the whole the worms had 

 it. So our pets were generally known as kiri. 



"DOWN THE COAST." 



By. W. F. Sinclair, C.S. 

 (Read at the Society's Meeting on 12th November 1889.) 



On a former occasion I described to you a voyage to the Isle- 

 fort of Janjira by the creeks. It is a good terminus ; and I 

 propose, to-day, to re-visit it by another route, indicated by the 

 title of this discourse, and starting from Alibag. 



We must on this occasion suppose an early spring tide and start, 

 as for our last trip, a little before high water, say, at 9 A.M. 



Our place of embarkation is a long sand-bank, so low that the 

 highest monsoon tides sometimes wash over it, and covered with 

 innumerable shells, all dead and worn, but many still entire, and 

 often much more beautiful in decay than they were in life. 



Behind this is a little lagoon, filled by the rising tide, and then 

 a few hundred yards of sand, green here and there with wiry shore 

 grass, and backed by a long line of palm orchards, like Mahim Woods. 

 Like these, too, they contain a population of some thousand souls ; 

 and my reason for bringing them particularly to your notice is, 

 that they cover what was, within recent history, exactly such a 

 bank as that from which we sail. Their lagoon is now a salt-marsh 

 in course of transformation into rice-fields, and if, as we suppose, 

 the thing that has been is that which shall be, the sand-bank of 

 to-day will be the town and garden of another generation. I wonder 

 if it will read this prophecy there. 



On our left, or landward, side, as we face south, we see the 

 line of the palm trees stretching some seven miles, till it seems to 



