Letters, Extracts fi'om Correspondence, Notices, ^c. 421 



skeleton of the Ceylonese Elephant. In this last I counted 

 one cervical, twenty-five dorsal and lumbar, four sacral (anchy- 

 losed), and twenty-five caudal vertebrse. A skeleton of quite 

 a young Elephant had a similar number of vertebrae. The 

 specimens of birds were few, from various parts of the world, 

 Australia, America, &c. Most of them were labelled " Ex- 

 ternal form of —," and too frequently wrongly named. 



There were, besides, some unidentified fish and snakes in bottles, 

 with a few preparations of diseased parts of the human body; 

 and also a small collection of shells and stones. 



The general formation of Ceylon, about Kandy, appears to be 

 limestone, with more or less quartz, the latter often speckled 

 with pink of different shades, and sometimes with blue. Large 

 quantities of iron-pyrites also occur. In Colombo and Galle a 

 kind of rock, locally called cabook, is everywhere found. It 

 looks like a conglomerate of clay, hardened by the percolation 

 of water saturated with iron, full of holes, depressions, and ir- 

 regularities. It occurs at no great depth below the superin- 

 cumbent soft clay, and is used for building purposes at the two 

 mentioned towns, where the Kandian limestone does not occur. 

 At Bombay the formation appears to be trappean. 



Dec. 12th. Reached Penang, and went, as is customary, to the 

 Waterfall. The rocks here are large black boulders of granite, 

 much as on the coast of South China, lying on reddish gravel 

 and clay. The trees are of much the same character as at Cey- 

 lon, but more covered with ferns. In many gardens the Casua- 

 rina equisetifolia of Australia has attained a very large size, their 

 trunks being overrun with Drymoglossum and other ferns. The 

 cinnamon-tree has been almost entirely destroyed, as at Singa- 

 pore — it is said, by a worm. I startled from the top of the 

 waterfall a fine Sea-Eagle with white feet and tail. The Sensi- 

 tive Plant gi'ows here as a weed, as also at Ceylon and Singapore. 

 A few Swallows [Hirundo gutturalis), some Swifts [Cypselus 

 subfurcatus, Blyth), a Magpie-Robin or two [Copsychus minda- 

 nensis), with its familiar habits and notes, very similar to those 

 of C. saularis and a Chalcophaps indica, were all the birds I 

 observed in this trip. By the way, in speaking of Copsychui>, 

 it is well to note here, that both Gould (Birds of Asia) and 



