498 Literary Intelligence. [No. 5. 



bask and sleep in the morning suu (!). Forbes, in his ' Oriental 

 Memoirs,' gives an account of these so-called ' Seals' as " abound- 

 ing in the salt-waters of Travancore ;" but his description of them 

 is either inaccurate, or it must refer to some other animal (which is 

 exceedingly unlikely). He says — " The Travancore Seal has a round 

 head, short ears, thick neck, tapering body, and flat tail, like a fish ; 

 it is web-footed, and the shin covered with a soft oily hair. Seals," 

 he adds, " vary in size and appearance in different countries : at 

 Anjingo they seldom exceed 4 ft. [!] in length : they are gregarious 

 and sociable ; form parties on the banks of the rivers, but always 

 plunge in at the approach of a stranger." (2nd edition, I, 227.) 



In our Andamau specimen of a lower jaw, the first molar has a 

 minute forked crown and proportionally very large root. Then fol- 

 low three deciduary pre-molars, ground to a perfectly flat surface ; 

 and behind these a tuberculated permanent molar, which had nearly 

 pierced the gum when the animal came by its death. 



A complete skeleton of an adult Duyong would be extremely ac- 

 ceptable for the Society's museum ; no matter how roughly prepar- 

 ed, provided no bones are wanting. Skulls, also, of adults of both. 

 sexes are desirable. 



Liteeahy Intelligence. 



The following is extracted from a letter to Dr. W. N. Lees from 

 Mr. Wright of Dublin, dated lGth October, 1859. 



" I do not think that 1 have ever written to you to thank you 

 for your last present, the Introduction to the (j^l oLs^ In my last 

 parcel from Williams and Norgate I have just received the Per- 

 sian tenet of that work, and the 3rd and 4th vols, of the Kash- 

 shaf ; which I was glad to see is advancing so rapidly. At home 

 but little of consequence has been done in the Arabic line, except- 

 ing Wiistenf eld's Histories of Mecca {el-Azraki y Koib-al-din, &c.) and 

 Life of the Prophet by Ibn Hishdm, and an edition of Mutanabbi by 

 Dieterici of Berlin. iSprenyer is busy with his life of Mohammed, 

 as I see from his last letter to me. A volume has lately appeared 

 at Gotha, containing a catalogue of the Persian MSS. there, by a 

 young scholar named Pertsch. Vuller's Persian Lexicon seems to 



