from Ceylon and the Coast of Cor om cm del. 31 



end which I had proposed to myself, which was to make this 

 substance more perfectly known than it then was, by deter- 

 mining at the same time its intimate connexion with all the 

 stones°to which jewellers apply the term oriental, such as the 

 oriental ruby, topaz, amethyst, sapphire, &c, I took advan- 

 tage of this' circumstance to insert some details relating to 

 other substances, and more particularly to spinelle. Mr. White, 

 an officer in the English army, whom, on his departure for Cey- 

 lon, I strongly recommended to procure some stones from 

 that island, sent us, in a collection otherwise of little value, 

 two fragments of rocks, in which I observed, for the first 

 time, the spinelle of Ceylon in its gangue, and not from the 

 sand of the rivers of that island. 



It is twenty years since this observation was made; and 

 since that period we have received no addition to our first 

 knowledge upon this subject respecting the corundum of 

 nearly the whole of India, and that, more interesting on ac- 

 count of its transparency and purity, of the island of Ceylon. 

 Notwithstanding that the English, masters of nearly the whole 

 of India, and at present of the whole of Ceylon, carry on a 

 regular correspondence between every part of India and the 

 metropolis of their country, they are still, I think, liable to 

 reproach in this respect; which opinion arises from the in- 

 terest which I take in science, and in its progress in a country 

 where it has procured me so many gratifications*. 



M. Leschenault de Latour, sent into India by the French 

 Government, with a particular commission to procure for our 

 colonies the vegetables which appear to be useful to their 

 agriculture, as well as to the extension of their commerce, is 

 the inquirer to whom we are indebted for the most extended 

 knowledge of the mineralogy and geology of some of the most 

 interesting districts of India ; on account of the information 

 which he has collected concerning these two sciences, though he 



* This reproach, perhaps, may seem severe, the Geological Society of 

 London, of which I had the honour to be one of the founders, having 

 printed in 1821, in the second part of the fifth volume of its Transactions, 

 a letter addressed from Ceylon by Dr. John Davy to Sir James MacGregor, 

 and which was read to the Society on the 4th of December 1818. But the 

 details contained in that letter, relating as much to the mineralogy as to 

 the geology of Ceylon, can only be considered, it appears to me, as those 

 of a slight glance thrown over the island. The indications and descriptions 

 which accompany the substances therein named, arc so short and incom- 

 plete, that they seem but to convey a promise, speedily to be fulfilled, of a 

 work of more importance, containing more instructive details, and so ar- 

 ranged as to arrest the attention of the mineralogist and geologist. I can- 

 not°help expressing my regret, that Dr. Davy, so well qualified for this un- 

 dertaking, has not carried this work to perfection. Perhaps, however, my 

 regret i< premature. 



was 



