390 Scientific Intelligence, Sfc. 



mate of India, and the character of the people, were, in several 

 respects, accurately described ; that the notion of a people of pigmies 

 was in part founded upon an imperfect acquaintance with the abori- 

 gines of India, the barbarous tribes still numerous in the forests and 

 mountains of various districts ; and, in part, upon mythological 

 beings believed by the Hindoos to exist ; and that, in like manner, 

 the other monstrous races of men with dogs' heads and tails, one leg, 

 no heads, were referable partly to the Hindoo Pantheon, and partly 

 to the mountaineers inhabiting the country on the north of the 

 Hindu Koh and Himalaya. Under the second head, or that of 

 Natural His'tory, the writer shewed, that, amidst many fabulous 

 accounts, there were traces of accurate information, and that the 

 cattle, some of the birds, the lac insect, the indigo plant, and the 

 bambu, were evidently intended, by the accounts given of them ; 

 whilst, in other instances, as in the martichora and the unicorn, the 

 characteristics of more than one animal had been blended together 

 and embellished with features derived from the monsters of sculpture, 

 Hindu or Persian. In the course of the paper, the etymological 

 explanations of the Indian names which occur in Ctesias, conjectured 

 by former Orientalists, were shewn, for the most part, to be 

 unfounded, and others, drawn from the Sanscrit language, were 

 proposed. 



II. — Observations on the Steam-Engines of Cornwall. — Bv 

 W. J. Henwood, F. G. S., Lond. and Paris; Hon. M.Y.P.S.', 

 Curator of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall. 



To the Editor of the Records of General Science. 



Sir,— In the London and Edinburgh Phil. Mag. (VII. 369.) there 

 is a paper by Mr. John Taylor, " on a New Rotative Steam-engine," 

 in which it is stated that we owe the method of working high-pres- 

 sure steam expansively to Mr. Woolf, and the circumstance of a rota- 

 tory single acting engine working expansively, is made to give the 

 title to the communication. 



In the same journal (VIII. 20.) I replied, that an engine working 

 on this principle had been erected by Mr. Watt in 1778 ; and that 

 single-acting rotatory engines working expansively had been in con- 

 stant use at Binner Downs Mines in this county since 1828 ; also 

 that Captain Trevithick had worked high-pressure steam expan- 

 sively in one cylinder before Mr. Woolf had come to reside in Corn- 

 wall, or erected an engine in the county. 



Mr. Taylor rejoined (VIII. 136.) that '* it was no part of his ob- 

 ject to discuss whether the engine which be described was new or 

 otherwise ;" that it is " much more important to the public to consi- 

 der the steps by which improvements are worked out to practical ad- 

 vantage, than to indulge in disputes about such originators of an 

 invention as did little more than to broach an idea." 



He charges me with love of controversy, and with " losing no op- 

 portunity of endeavouring to detract from Mr. Woolf 's merits, and 



