No. 31.— 1885.] 



PLUMBAGO. 



185 



over Germany — in Prussia, Austria, Bavaria, and Bohemia — 

 are only second in fame to the peerless English pits ; 

 while finds of the mineral are reported from places so 

 widely separated as North America, Finland, Greenland, 

 Siberia, Spain, Australia, Japan, and Madagascar. It is a 

 curiously suggestive fact, too, that traces of this form of 

 carbon have been found in meteorites which have reached 

 our globe from the regions of planetary space. 



In addition to a large lump of Pasdun Korale plumbago 

 on the lower floor of the Colombo Museum, the gift of Sir 

 Charles Peter Layard, beside which stand specimens of plum- 

 bago crucibles from the Battersea Factory, there are, in one 

 of the mineral cases upstairs, associated with pieces of the 

 Ceylon ore, pure or with a rocky matrix, a collection of 

 graphites presented by Mr. W. W. Mitchell, illustrative of 

 the mineral as found in Siberia, Canada, Finland, Japan 

 and Travancore. Allowing for the fact that the foreign 

 plumbagos are dulled by time and climate, their appearance 

 certainly does not convey any idea of superiority over our 

 local product. 



If Bennett (author of " Ceylon and its Capabilities") is 

 correct, Ptolemy mentioned this substance amongst the pro- 

 ductions of Ceylon, when writing in the second century 

 of our era. It is curious that Bennett, of all the writers 

 on the Island, should alone have made this statement. 

 Tennent, who carefully epitomized the geographical in- 

 formation contained in Ptolemy's writings, does not quote 

 him as mentioning the mineral. *Pridham, of whose classical 

 research Tennent entertained a high opinion, is equally silent. 

 Mr. Green, Director of Public Instruction, kindly endea- 

 voured at my request to test Bennett's statement by reference 

 to Ptolemy, but no copy of the original work was accessible, 

 and a summary of Ptolemy's statements in the Indian 

 Antiquary does not confirm what Bennett wrote. Should 

 further research show that Ptolemy really mentioned plum- 

 bago, it would be interesting to ascertain if the native name 

 (Sinhalese or Tamil) was merely transferred, or if a word was 

 used indicative of a knowledge by the Greeks and Komans 

 of graphite and any of its uses. 



If the ancient native historical records," in their almost 

 exclusive devotion to the glorification of monarchs who 



