586 Notes upon a tour through the R&jmahal Hills. [No. 7. 



hornet arrived and settled, he was immediately seized by the ants, 

 several to each leg, others mounted on his back and in a few seconds 

 and after a violent struggling he fell dead to the ground ; but whether 

 stung or bitten to death I could not observe ; in a couple of hours the 

 ground was strewed with hundreds of hornets and before the evening 

 the nest was destroyed. 



I have seen a full grown chameleon killed in a few minutes by these 

 ferocious insects ; the poor creature had been, together with his cage, 

 put in the sun at the foot of a tree, from which the ants descended, 

 attacked the animal, and killed him. 



1st February, 1851. — Direction north-east six miles to Simuria on 

 the hills, the residence of Kesoo Sirdar, one of the northern stipen- 

 diary chiefs. The greater part of the road was through heavy jungle, 

 through which a road had to be cut for the elephants. Passed over 

 several beds of Kunkur lying upon basalt ; and in a deep Nullah 

 between two small Sonthal hamlets, Singtee and Simurtola, saw a bed 

 of fresh water limestone common to the basaltic formation. This bed 

 was discovered by Mr. Pontet last year and opened by him ; it is a 

 bluish grey rock, filled with minute longitudinal cavities ; the strata 

 are much contorted ; it effervesces freely with dilute acid. 



Ascended the Simuria hill to the village of the same name, by a 

 steep stony road, through jungle ; the rock is basalt with masses of 

 iron stone. 



The village of Simuria is buried in a fine forest of magnificent Nau- 

 clea and Uvaria, any one of which would be an ornament to a park ; 

 the soil on the hills composed of the decomposed basalt and iron stone 

 mixed with decomposed vegetable matter forms a soil highly condu- 

 cive to the growth of both trees and crops in general. 



The view from the summit of these hills, which here form the 

 northern boundary of the range is very extensive, extending to fifty 

 miles north of the Ganges, and on clear days in the rainy and cold 

 weather months, or from August to December, to the snowy range of 

 the Himalaya, distant one hundred and eighty miles. 



Kesoo Sirdar, who is an elderly man, was most attentive : he intro- 

 duced me to his wives, (he has four,) to his children and grand-children, 

 who all received presents according to their ages, consisting of money, 

 beads, gilt and glass buttons, a large clasp knife, scissors, empty bot- 



