194 



POPULAR ECONOMIC BOTANY. 



India it is made by the poorer natives^ who move from place 

 to place^ selecting jungles where the Acacia is most 

 abundant. They cut down the trees and chop the heart- 

 wood into chips, which they boil in water ; when the water 

 is deeply coloured, it is strained off, and submitted to the 

 process of evaporation, fresh supplies of the decoction being 

 added, until the whole by evaporation becomes thickened 

 sufficiently ; it is then poured out into clay moulds, and left 

 to dry in the sun. 



An interesting sketch, from the Letters of Dr. J. D. 

 Hooker, published in ^ Hooker^s Journal of Botany,^ will 

 give a painful insight into the life of the Kutt^' makers 

 of India. 



At half-past eight a. m. it suddenly fell calm, and we 

 proceeded to Chakuchee, the native carts breaking down in 

 their passage over the projecting beds of flinty rocks, or as 

 they hurried down the inclined planes which we cut through 

 the precipitous banks of the streams. Near Chakuchee we 

 passed an alligator, just killed by two men, — a foul beast 

 about nine feet long, and of the Mager kind. More inter- 

 esting than its natural history was the painful circumstance 

 of its having just swallowed a child, that was playing in 

 the water, while its mother was washing her domestic uten- 



