1868.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 91 



about 10 miles N. N. E. of Saiping and that their being so present has 

 given the name to the hill. 



The only conclusion that I would offer as to their orgin and use is, 

 that they were made by some former race of hill-men, to store grain in, 

 and that the lower unfinished half was set in the ground, but the 

 makers must have been of a totally different race from the present 

 inhabitants. 



Mr. Blanford said, that so far as an opinion could be found from the 

 description and accompanying sketches, it seemed probable that the 

 spheres in question were concretions, and therefore of natural origin. 

 Concretions consisting of a hard shell containing loose sand were not 

 uncommon in sands and friable sandstones ; and sometimes gave 

 occasion for much wild speculation. Their mode of formation was not 

 perhaps well understood, nor was that of many other equally strange 

 concretionary forms, but they were all the result of crystalline action, 

 portions of the soft matrix being cemented together by some infiltrated 

 mineral ; in most cases either limonite, calcite or silica. Hollow 

 concretions of the kind noticed had been described by Sir Samuel 

 Baker in his recent work l The Abyssinian tributaries of the Nile' as 

 very abundant in the Nubian Desert ; and were spoken of with the 

 utmost confidence as volcanic bombs, with which, it was abundantly 

 clear from his description, they had no relation whatever. 



On the determination of the latitude and longitude of Port 

 Blair ; extracted from Lieutenant-Colonel J. T. Walker's report 

 on the operations of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India 

 in 1865-1866. 



In the year 1861, the Superintendent of Port Blair, the well-known 

 convict settlement on one of the Andaman Islands, in the Bay of 

 Bengal, reported to the Government of India that the position of the 

 Great Coco Island, which lies immediately to the north of the An- 

 damans, was so inaccurately laid down on the Admiralty Charts, that 

 the safety of ships sailing between Calcutta and Singapore was endan- 

 gered thereby; shortly afterwards, a communication was received from 

 the Bombay Government representing that the longitude of Port 



