lxiv Proceedings of the Asiatic Society . [June, 1845. 



D. Thick laminated and contorted, perhaps a harder kind. 



Major General Cullen has forwarded to us from Trevandrum two specimens of Gra- 

 phite. This graphite is of the soft, loose scaly kind which would evidently not serve for 

 pencils, and for inferior uses it is probably too cheap at home to render it worth shipping. 

 Nevertheless a few maunds might be tried since its collection and package would be 

 made at a trifling expense. 



General Cullen says— for though not writing for publication I cannot do better than 

 borrow his words : 



Cochin, 3rd March, 1845. 



" I send you by a vessel bound for Calcutta some specimens of what I suppose to be 

 Graphite which I lately discovered near Trevandrum in Travancore. You may perhaps 

 have observed in a late No. (30) of the Madras Journal of Science a slight notice of the 

 discovery by me of this mineral in Tinnevelly as well as Travancore ? At first the indica- 

 tions of it were trifling, consisting merely of small scales or sometimes of thin plates about 

 the size of a dollar disseminated in the Limestone or Gneiss of Tinnevelly or the Gneiss 

 or Laterite of Travancore. Subsequent researches have proved to me that it is not only 

 very generally (widely) distributed, but that it is not improbable it may be found in 

 such abundance and purity as to render it an article of commerce. 



I have procured some specimens of very fine sorts, in lumps about the size of a small 

 egg, from pits in a Kunkur deposit at Tinnevelly, but I have not yet been able to visit and 

 examine the spot carefully. The lumps, however, seem to consist of scales or lamina 

 rather closely aggregated, but not so much so as to admit of leads being cut out of them 

 fit for pencils, it is also exceedingly flexible or soft. 



Perhaps, however, at a great depth or incumbent pressure its solidity may be greater. 



Small scales or plates of graphite are also exceedingly common in Travancore, par- 

 ticularly south of Trevandrum, but I have found traces of it as far north even as Cochin. 



The variety of graphite which I have sent you by sea was discovered in my search for 

 finer specimens of the laminar kind. I learnt that the potters of Trevandrum occasion- 

 ally, at the great festivals, blackened their earthen vessels with a mineral which was sup- 

 posed to be plumbago. 



I visited the spot, which was 5 or 6 miles from Trevandum, on the slope of a gneiss hill, 

 the lower portions of which were overlaid with laterite ; or rather the gneiss rock was 

 there decomposed into laterite, to a certain depth from the surface ; small lumps of laterite 

 containing the plumbago were lying about on the surface, there was no regular work- 

 ings, but I opened the soil or laterite in the bed of a water course for a distance of about 

 40 or 50 feet, and found a regular stratum or vein of the mineral more or less rich ; imbed- 

 ded and lying parallel to the strata of laterite as the specimens now sent. It appeared 

 to become rich as we went deeper. I brought away some hundred pounds of the mixed 

 ore or laterite. It has not yet been turned to any account. 



Its fibrous appearance only excepted, or rather its granular texture and its application 

 to pottery, made me suppose at first that it might be an ore of antimony, nor does it soil 

 so strongly as the laminar varieties. The fibrous varieties are very like specimens which 

 I have of the Ceylon graphite ; the geological relation to the deposit in Ceylon will be 

 interesting. 



