- PEGU. jl 



thyfls, and rubies. The river was known to Ptolemy by the 

 title of Befynga, and gave its name to the modern river of 

 Pegu. 



The other exports of Pegu are teek timber, elephants, ivory, Exports, 

 bees-wax, lac, iron, tin, indigo, oil from different woods, oil of 

 earth, or Naptba, and of fifli. Here are mines of gold and filver, 

 but neither of thefe are worked. The iron is native, and found in 

 jnaffes of fifteen or twenty pounds weight, and ready for the ma- 

 nufafturer ; alfo plenty of fulphur and faltpetre, but the exporta- 

 tion of the laft is moft ftridtly prohibited. Rice is cultivated in 

 great abundance in the low lands of the country, but no atten- 

 tion is paid to any fort of manufadlures, except that of cotton, 

 for home confumption. 



I MAY obferve, that the bees of the torrid zone are the fame Bees. 

 with xhQEuropean,\hQVQ being only one fpecies producing lioney, 

 which is xhQApis Mellijica. No attempts are made, either in India 

 or the hotter parts of Africa, to hive thefe admirable and ufefal 

 infects; they inhabit the hollows of trees, from which their trea- 

 fures are taken. 



Lac is the produ6tion of another infect, a fpecies of Cbertnes, Lac. 

 undefcribed by Linnaeus. Do(5tor Roxburgh, a naturalift now 

 rifing in HindooJIan, gives us an account of its operations, in 

 the Philofophical Tranfadtions*, under the name of Cbermes 

 Lacca. This, like the bee, forms cells, pentagons, hexagons, 

 and irregular fquares, v/hich, at Samulcotta^ in Orixa, the 

 Doctor's refidence, are affixed to the branches of the Mimofa 

 Cinerea, the Mimofa Glauca of Kcenig^ and a new fpecies called 

 by the Gentoos, Conda Corinda. The infects are very fmall ; they 



* Vol. Ixxxi. p. 228. tab. vi, 



C 2 firft 



