VOYAGE FROM INDIA TO SIAM AMD MALACCA. 81 



There was a shrub g-rowing" about a man's height, it had only 

 a few main branches, which were g-enerally five-cornered and 

 covered with a brown bark. They had fruits looking' like 

 pears, being- round, rather flattened at one end, they contained 

 some 5 or 6 angled seeds as big" as a pea ; in the unripe ones one 

 could well recog-nise the three flat tyles, divided into two parts 

 at the end. There were fewer male blossoms ; they had short 

 stalks which stood at the angle where the leaves joined the 

 branch ; they consisted of a green calyx divided into (three ?) 

 parts, oval, and white near the edges, they had no perianth. 

 The leaves were oblong, smooth, soft, thin bifarious ; pro- 

 bably it is the same plant of which Mr. Osbeck speaks in the 

 German edition, page 267 SisFrutex baccis lhis,folas obverse ovatis, 

 but these were not so, and the pears are eaten there are sweet 

 and mealy. There is shrub growing on the coast of Coromandel 

 which is very bushy and rarely more than a quarter of a man's 

 height with obverse cordate alternate leaves which is sure to be 

 another species of this kind ; it resembles both the Agyneia and the 

 Phyllanthus but its blossoms are much bigger than those described 

 by me above. There were many plants here too, with grass- 

 like leaves ; they probably belong to the Monandria, but I could 

 not find any blossom. 



The Agyneia vitis-idea had large leaves here, but was only 

 a small shrub. Datura metel and Urena lobata grew in the 

 neighbourhood of a village. The greatest part of the wood 

 consisted of coco trees, the nuts of which lay on the ground ; 

 many of them were in a state of putrefaction and some germinated. 



Near a village 1 found Poa a-mabilis* cynosurus indiciis^ 

 and a new delicate species of Poa. 



As it grew dark I went to one of those hamlets, where about 

 twenty houses, most of them with pointed thatched roofs stood 

 on piles. The principal houses, three in number, were placed in 

 the middle, but each separate from the other. They were built 

 on piles about 10 to 12 inches thick, and more than a man's height. 

 Some of them had 24 to 30 of these piles; they were bamboo, 

 and one side was open where a bench hung by ropes, large enough 

 to allow two people to sit upon, and so low, that their feet when 

 sitting would touch the ground. The roof of the real dwelling 

 house was in some cases angularly pointed, in others rounder ; 

 * Eragrostis amahilis, R. Br. f Eleusine indica, L. 



