I.— NOTES ON NATURAL HISTORY IN INDIA. 



By Dr WILLIAM WATSON, President. 



(Read Nov. 38, 1888.) 



I ha\t; to thank you for the honour you have done me in 

 electing me as your President. My claims to the honour 

 are slender. They principally consist in my having more 

 leisure than othei* -members of the Society — not a very im- 

 portant qualification in itself, but it has apparently had some 

 weight with your Council. I have accepted solely for that 

 reason, believing that as I am probably the only member of your 

 Society who has absolutely nothing to do, I am in that respect, 

 at least, the fittest person to undertake the onerous duties of 

 President. With regard to a presidential address, I have had 

 some difficulty ; but as the only subject I know much about is 

 India, I have resolved to give you a brief sketch of that country, 

 from a natural history point of view. There is additional pro- 

 priety in my choosing this subject to-night, inasmuch as our late 

 President, Mr Symington Grieve, is sailing at present to " India's 

 coral strand," and by this time will have passed Ceylon, with 

 its " spicy breezes," as Bishop Heber puts it, where — 



" The heathen in his blindness 



Bows down to ■wood and stone." 



All this, by the way, may be beautiful poetry, but it is not 

 altogether correct, from a natural history point of view. In 

 the first place, the shores of India are alluvial or volcanic, not 

 coral. ISText, " spicy breezes " do not blow over Ceylon ; and 

 when breezes do blow, they certainly do not, as a rule, blow 

 softly. Lastly, whatever the people, of India may do, the 

 Singalese, or inhabitants of Ceylon, certainly never " bow down 

 to wood and stone." It is the very last thing a Buddhist would 

 do, more especially a Buddhist of the Southern sect, to which 

 the people of Ceylon belong — a sect which has always protested 



