318 PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTIONS. ^ANNO 1 778. 



upper part of the house, and having made a hole at the bottom, fit to it a piece 

 of bamboo, which reaches quite through the house, and 3 or 4 feet into the 

 ground: this serves to convey all putrid moisture from the corpse, without occa- 

 sioning any smell. They seem to have great ceremonies at these funerals; but 

 they would not allow Mr. M. to see them. He saw several figures dressed 

 up like men, and heard a kind of singing and dancing all night before the body 

 was interred: they also fired a great many guns. At these funerals they kill a 

 great many buffliloes; eveiy Raja, for u considerable distance, brings a buffalo 

 and kills it at the grave of the deceased, sometimes even a year after his inter- 

 ment; he assisted at the ceremony of killing the 106th buffalo at a Raja's grave. 

 The Battas have abundance of black cattle, buffaloes, and horses, all which they 

 eat. They also have great quantities of small black dogs, with erect pointed 

 ears, which they fatten and eat. Rats and all sorts of wild animals, whether 

 killed by them or found dead, they eat indifferently. Man's flesh may rather be 

 said to be eaten in terrorem, than to be their common food; yet they prefer it to 

 all others, and speak with peculiar raptures of the soles of the feet and palms of 

 the hands. They expressed much surprize on being informed that white people 

 did not kill, much less eat, their prisoners. 



It is from this country that most of the cassia sent to Europe is procured. 

 The cassia tree grows to 50 or 6o feet, with a stem of about 2 feet diameter, 

 with a beautiful regular spreading head. Camphii-e and benjamin trees are in 

 tills country in great abundance; the former grows to the size of our largest 

 oaks, and is the common timber in use: some of these trees are nearly 100 feet 

 high. Its leaves are acuminated and very different from the camphire tree seen 

 in the botanic gardens, which is the tree from which the Japanese procure their 

 camphire by a chemical process; whereas in these trees the camphire is found 

 native in a concrete form. Native camphire sells here at upwards of ^'200. 

 per cwt. to carry to China; what the Chinese do to it, he cannot say; but, 

 though they purchase it at -^250. or ^"300. they sell it again for Europe at 

 about a quarter of the money. Mr. M. never saw the flower of the camphire 

 tree; some abortive fruit he had frequently found under the trees, they are in a 

 cup, like an acorn, but the laciniee calycis are 4 or 5 times longer than the 

 seed. 



It is amazing, says Mr. M,, how poor the Fauna of this country is, par- 

 ticularly in the mammalia and aves. There are abundance of the simia gibbon 

 of BufFon: they are quite black, about 3 feet high, and their arms to the 

 ground when they stand erect; they walk on their hind legs only. Mr. M. had 

 seen hundreds of them together on the tops of high trees. There are several 

 other species of the simia also. The ourang outan, or wild man (for that is the 

 meaning of the words) he heard much talk of, but never saw any; nor any of 



