204 Notes on Natural History in India. [Sess. 



eating. A man in my time could easily get drunk on a 

 pennyworth. Perhaps the price is higher now, when the 

 British Government has put a duty on intoxicating drinks. 

 Another tree is the Buchanania, the flesh of whose fruit is 

 delightful, and the kernel of whose stone is as good as pis- 

 tachios. The native name of this fruit is " chirongee," and 

 this is about the most common name of a girl in the Banda 

 county, it being presumed that she is as nice and sweet as the 

 fruit of the Buchanania. The forest stretches for miles north, 

 south, east, and west, and one can ride the whole day under 

 dense shade, only every now and then coming to a deep ravine 

 formed by a water-course. Each water-course has a waterfall 

 somewhere, for the water has to get down from the uplands to 

 the alluvial plain. Originally these waterfalls must have been 

 at the very edge of the upland, where it joined the plain ; but 

 centuries of erosion have now carried them far back into the 

 very heart of the forest. The waterfalls axe, on an average, 

 about 300 feet high, and the deep sunless ravine below the 

 fall is luxuriant with ferns and mosses and fungi. Of the 

 many falls I have seen, the two most beautiful were those of 

 Keuti and Galrampore. Here and there, in the forest itself, 

 there is an open space green with grass, or blue with Evol- 

 vulus alsinoides, a plant allied to convolvulus ; or one may come 

 on a little lake or tank covered with Nelumbium speciosum 

 (the lotus), — the flower emblematic of India, peculiar to it, and 

 one of the most beautiful of its many flowers. Herodotus 

 mentions it as growing in the Nile, but it certainly does not 

 grow there now, and it is not found among the flowers pre- 

 served in the tombs of the early Egyptian kings. Most of these 

 flowers have been identified, and there is plenty of Nymphsea 

 cserulea and N. lotus, but no Nelumbium has ever been found 

 It is almost certain, therefore, that the later Egyptian kings 

 had it brought from India, and that it was cultivated there, 

 when it was seen in the Nile by Herodotus. It must have 

 died out when the Egyptian monarchy fell. That Herodotus 

 saw it, there is no doubt. No other plant answers his descrip- 

 tion — " a lily like a rose, growing in the water, the fruit like 

 a wasp's nest, and containing edible seeds the size of olive 

 stones." Even in India it is not a very common plant. It is 

 not found in Western India, owing to the frosts in winter. It 



