170 On the Boksas of Bijnour. [No. 3, 
vation however energetic, and that consequently, except in one or 
two favoured villages in good seasons, the mass of these people mostly 
subsist for a great part of the year on the wild yam, which does not 
contain all the elements for properly replenishing the blood,—that 
their supply of pulse which might supplement this want is not large, 
and that they grow almost no vegetables. Doubtless the flesh they 
eat, when it can be got, tends to lessen the detrimental consequences 
of their monotonous and miserable diet, but with the Disarming Act 
even partially enforced, they do not get the full benefit of that 
palliative. They are, at the best, but spare small men, and become 
prematurely old and feeble. Men of forty I have noted as “thin, grey, 
and breathless,” and they themselves attribute their ailments to scanty 
food. 
It would appear that the state of system induced among the Boksas, 
by the circumstances of their diet, is similar to that arising among 
some classes of the Inish fram continued subsistence upon the potato 
alone, as detailed in a paper read to the Dublin Royal Society by a : 
medical member in the course of last year. It is also analogous to that 
condition which is noted by Dr. Mouat as leading to the fearful mortali- 
ty among the Sontals, and members of other wild tribes in the jails of 
Bengal, and which has also at times been obseryed among prisoners 
in Great Britain, in consequence of ill-advised changes in the dietary, 
Within the last few months, the existence of a similar state of consti- 
tution caused by poor diet has been suggested, by an experienced 
medical officer, as predisposing to the fatality of epidemic fever among 
the prisoners in the Punjab jails. This state of system, as existing 
among the Boksas, is perhaps more nearly allied to scurvy than to any 
other disorder, and although they or other people, in a condition of 
freedom, in whom it exists, probably seldom die dmmediately from it, 
yet it renders them infinitely more liable to succumb to attacks of 
epidemic or other disorders. 
Tt is likely that the debility so evident in the adults likewise 
exists in the children of this tribe. Besides the numbers of young — 
persons alluded to above, as carried off by epidemics; of 14 instances 
in which the age at which death occurred was incidentally mentioned, § 
eight occurred before puberty, only six afterwards; and in almost all 
the families whose circumstances happened to be detailed, the minority 

