450 



above Wankaneer in Kattiawav. The gum is chiefly used as a frank- 

 incense ; but the natives of Guzerat, and probably of other provinces 

 where the tree is found, collect and bruise the recent berries and twigs, 

 boiling the juice out in cauldrons, and having mixed it with their 

 chunam (lirae), to which it imports increased tenacity, commence all 

 their dwellings with lime thus mixed, it is said from a religious mo- 

 tive. The gum is found most abundantly after the rains, when it is 

 collected in pieces as it exudes from the tree, and is often very dirty 

 from the careless way in which it is gathered, being mixed with the 

 bark and twigs, and sometimes even with the subjacent soil. The 

 harder and nearly transparent drops are picked out by the Banyan 

 merchant, and fetch a higher price than the rest. 



The author states that he is indebted to the late Dr. Charles Lush, 

 r.L.S., Superintendent of the Honourable East India Company's Bota- 

 nical Gardens at Darpoorie, who in 1842, from the sketches and spe- 

 cimens then in the author's possession, identified the plant as the 

 Amyris Kataf of Forskahl, and assisted in identifying the gum with 

 the Bdellium of the ancients. He believes that if at all known to 

 Hoxburgh, it must be under the names of Amyris nana or of Bos- 

 wellia. 



The paper concluded with a description of the plant, and with some 

 remarks on the geological character of the localities in which it is 

 found ; and was accompanied by a sketch of a branch, and by speci- 

 mens of the gum in its pure and mixed states. 



On a large Block of Sandstone from the Neighbourhood of Swellen- 

 dam, South Africa. By Benjamin Kennedy, F.L.S. 



Mr. Kennedy, in exhibiting the sandstone, which was sent to him 

 by his son, gave the following extract from the letter accompanying 

 it:— 



" The fossil (if fossil it is) which I have sent you is about one-sixth 

 part of one I saw in Kerqua's Kloof, eighteen miles west of this place 

 (Swellendam). It covered the face of a rock which projected from 

 the side of a mountain at its base. Four branches radiated from a 

 centre. I was in hopes that I should have been able to have got off 

 the whole piece, but unfortunately it split into three pieces when I 

 applied the wedges, having previously drilled holes, which took four 

 men a whole day to do. This stone has been known to the people 

 here for the last twenty-six years. The plane of the fossil was per- 



