SKETCH OF SIR LYON PLAY FAIR. 117 



used are turquoise, lapis-lazuli, agate, aqua-marina, and amber, if the 

 latter may be classed with the stones. They also wear ornaments 

 made of a colored porcelain, etc. The very great people, such as gov- 

 ernors, have large ornaments in gold. Most of their precious stones 

 come from the neutral ground, or Singpho country, north of Upper 

 Burmah, between the British province of Assam and China, also from 

 India via Cashmere. When a woman prepares for sleep she simply 

 wraps a man's Tchru ha round her head, and lets the skirts fall about 

 her, rolling herself up in these, and, with her boots and belt for a pil- 

 low, she requires to seek no couch. 



On the subject of trade very little can be said. Not that the trade 

 is insignificant by any means, but the system can be summed up in the 

 one word " peddling." Every family trades ; the Lamasseries trade ; 

 the officials trade ; but it is in every case conducted on the peddler 

 system. Members of a family attend to the trade of the family, and 

 travel immense distances with their laden mule and yaks, exchanging 

 their goods at different places as they go along. Shops are almost un- 

 known on any scale. 



SKETCH OF Sm LYON PLAYFAIK. 



IN Sir Lyon Playfair the British Association has for its president 

 this year a gentleman who, to a thorough scientific training and 

 a wide fame as a scientific man, unites a versatile adaptability to public 

 affairs, and who has done many unquestionable services to the state 

 in the lines of administration and of the advancement of great public 

 questions. " He is eminent," says the writer of a sketch of him in 

 an English paper, "as a scientific and practical chemist, a sanitary 

 reformer, an educational reformer, a man of public business, an ex- 

 minister, and late chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means in 

 the House of Commons." 



Dr. Playfair is a son of Mr. George Playfair, Chief Inspector- 

 General of Hospitals of Bengal, and was born at Meerut, Bengal, 

 May 21, 1819. He was taught at St. Andrews and afterward at Glas- 

 gow, where he studied chemistry under Sir Thomas Graham, till 1837, 

 when he went to India for his health. Upon his return to England, 

 with restored vigor, he rejoined Professor Graham, who was then in 

 the London University, but soon after went to Giessen, where he con- 

 tinued his chemical studies, in the " organic " branch of the science, 

 under Liebig, and translated some of that author's works into Eng- 

 lish. Upon his return to Scotland he became manager of the Messrs. 

 Thompson's Calico-Printing Works at Clitheroe. In 1843 he was ap- 

 pointed Professor of Chemistry, succeeding Dalton, in the Royal In- 

 stitution at Manchester. In the next year he was appointed, upon the 



