1840.] t Asiatic Society. 625 



A letter from Professor Lassen, of Bonn, was read, acknowledging the receipt 

 of several numbers of the Journal, and offering to dispose of any Sanscrit works 

 the Society might think proper to send to Bonn for sale ; — transferred to the Committee 

 of Papers. 



Specimens of Fossil Alcyonites from Girhur, a village about 40 miles from Nagpore, 

 were submitted by Dr. Spilsbury of Jubbulpore, with extract from a Madras 

 paper noting the experiment performed by Parkinson on similar fossils, viz. immer- 

 sion in diluted muriatic acid, which having removed about a quarter of an inch 

 of the substance of the fossil, enabled the observer to perceive with a lens of moderate 

 power, several cruciform spines, formed, as it were, by two fusiform bodies crossing 

 each other at right angles ; he supposes from their having withstood the action of the 

 muriatic acid, that these bodies, which were originally the spines of the animal, are 

 now formed of hydrophanous chalcedony, and imbedded in a matrix of carbonate 

 of lime, which has pervaded or supplied the place of the soft spongious parts. 

 " I placed one of these alcyonites," says Dr. Spilsbury, " in diluted muriatic 

 acid, which produced exactly the effect described in the paper above quoted, and with 

 the magnifying glass, the silicious radiae from a centre became very apparent." 



A communication was read from A. Grant, Esq. Magistrate of Delhi, announcing 

 his having dispatched to the Society a case of forged seals discovered among the ruins 

 near the town, by a party of prisoners while at work there. They purported to be the 

 seals of most of the persons of note who held authority during the decline of the Mogul 

 Empire, and must have been used in the fabrication of false sunnuds, deeds, and 

 warrants. This curious collection has since been received and lodged in the Museum. 



A lithograph, prepared by the celebrated Ritter, shewing the altitude of the snow 

 line throughout Asia, was presented to the Society by Dr. Jamieson, of Umballah, 

 with a promise of communications on the result of recent observations by him upon 

 the formation of the Himalyas. 



The Officiating Secretary informed the Society that the letter press of Ritter's Sections 

 was in progress of translation, and that the whole should appear in the Journal. 



A communication from the Rev. Professor Street, of Bishop's College, with extracts 

 from a manuscript in the Library of the College by Fra Giuseppe Da Rovato, was 

 read to the Society. The manuscript, dating from 1755, contained with various miscel- 

 laneous notices, on Hindoo Mythology and Literature, a notice of some of the antiqui- 

 ties which had struck the Rev. gentleman ; among others, the following notice of the 

 well known columns in Tirhoot, by which it would appear that both the columns had 

 then, when Fra Giuseppe examined them, the figure of a lion on their capital. 



" In regnis ergo Bettiee duas ego vidi columnas, in duas provincias differentes, quoe 

 "quidem eequales sunt, ex integro et solo lapide, habentes altitudinis viginti septem 

 " cubitos supra terrain, et septem in circumferentia, cum supraposito proportionato 

 " Leone. In utraque columna ex eodem charactere quasi eadem videntur esse verba. 

 " Quas litteras ego retraxi, et misi ad diversa loca, sed nemo potuit neque intelligere 

 "neque legere; non sunt litterae Indiana?, neque ultramontanse, sunt ex aliquo Graeco 

 "quia multce litteree sunt de Graeco Alphabeto, aliquae vero non. In fine vero descrip- 

 "tionis legitur in Arabico Idiomate "* * * * primus minister magui Alexandri 

 "erexit:" nomen vero non bene legitur." 



The writer of the manuscript was a member of the Roman Catholic Mission in 

 Nipal and Thibet from 1769 to 1787, about which time the monastery was pillaged 



