1848.] Observations made on a Botanical Excursion. 399 



which its tribe are so conspicuous ; beside these the two athletes leaned 

 on the bloody bamboo staffs, with which they had all but despatched 

 the animal. 



The Butea frondosa is abundantly in flowers here, and a gorgeous 

 sight. In mass the inflorescence resembles sheets of flame, and indivi- 

 dually the flowers are eminently beautiful, the bright orange red petals 

 contrasting brilliantly against the jet-black velvety calyx. 



By the river found two species of Gnaphalium, Paronychia, Tamarix, 

 a dwarf Acacia like Phyllanthus, Wahlenbergia, Campanula?, Lepidium, 

 Say it alia ? Vallisneria and Docks (Rumex Wallichii) in abundance. 

 Cumin and many other herbaceous plants ; tortoises are frequent on the 

 rocks, but pop into the water as approached. 



The nest of the Megachile (leaf-cutter bee) was in thousands in the 

 cliffs, with Ephemeras, Caddis worms, spiders and many predaceous 

 beetles. Lamellicom beetles are very rare, even Aphodius, and of 

 Cetonice I did not see one. 



The poor woman who lost her child earns a scanty maintenance by 

 making catechu ; she inhabits a little cottage, and has no property but 

 two cattle to bring wood from the hills, and a very few household 

 chatties, and how few of these they only know best who have seen the 

 meagre furniture of Dangha hovels. Her husband cuts the trees in 

 the forest and drags them to the hut, but he is now sick and her only 

 boy, her future stay it was whose end I have just related. Her daily 

 food is rice, with beans from the beautiful blue flowered Dolichos, trail- 

 ing round the cottage, and she is in debt to the contractor, who has 

 advanced two rupees to be paid off in three months by the preparation 

 of 240 ibs. of catechu. The present was her second husband, an old 

 man, by whom she never had any children, in which respect alone, did 

 she think herself very unfortunate, for her poverty she did not feel. 

 Rent to the rajah, to the police, and rates to the brahminic priest are here 

 all paid from an acre of land yielding so wretched a crop of barley, that it 

 more resembles a fallow field than a harvest. All day long the natives 

 are boiling down the catechu wood cut into chips, and pouring the decoc- 

 tion into a large wooden trough, where it is inspissated. 



This zillah is famous for the quantity of catechu its dry forests 

 yield. The plant is a little thorny tree, erect, and bearing a rounded 

 coma of well remembered prickly branches. Its wood is yellow, with 



