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JOURNAL, K.A.S. ( CEYLON). 



[Vol. IX, 



we may err in giving the ancient wedaralas credit for 

 knowledge of the principles on which certain substances 

 ought to be exhibited. If there is really no mention of 

 plumbago in Sinhalese records earlier than the fourteenth 

 century A.D., it is a curious fact that a document should 

 exist in Europe, supposed to be ruled by means of the 

 mineral, of date 1387 — that is in the very same century. But, 

 although some form of pencil must have been known and 

 used from time immemorial, notably the lead pencil with its 

 paler mark than that of plumbago, the first mention of a 

 rough "black lead" pencil, was by Gesner in 1565, about the 

 time when the famous Cumberland mines were discovered. 



I have not been able to ascertain if plumbago, the Tamil 

 name of which is kdr~iyam,i& mentioned in any ancient 

 Tamil records, and I cannot trace any notice of the mineral 

 by Muhammadan or Chinese voyagers, while Portuguese 

 writers on Ceylon seem, so far as they have been consulted, 

 to give no sign of a knowledge of black lead or its pro- 

 perties. The effect of the publication of this paper may be, 

 however, to reveal matter not within my reach, although I 

 did not fail to refer, directly and through competent 

 scholars, to a very large number of the best authorities. 

 The officer of the late Ceylon Rifle Regiment who wrote 

 a book on Ceylon stated that Thunberg, the Scandinavian 

 naturalist, who wrote in 1777, was the first to notice 

 plumbago as a product of Ceylon. This was an error. 

 Robert Knox, who wrote in 1681, mentions the existence 

 of the mineral ; and Valentyn gives a letter of a somewhat 

 earlier period by the Dutch Governor RyklofT van Goens, 

 dated 24th September, 1675, addressed to his successor the 

 Governor-General Jan Maatsuyker, in which he mentions 

 veins of plumbago (potloot) in the hills, and mines in the 

 low-country. He described it as a product of quicksilver, 

 an error which, repeated, may explain the alleged discovery 

 of a mine of quicksilver near Kotte, soon after the British 

 took possession of Colombo. So important was the latter 

 discovery deemed at the time that a military guard was 

 placed over the mine; but subsequently the existence of 

 quicksilver in Ceylon became as mythical as that of 

 anthracite seems now to be, or the alleged discovery of coal 

 by the Dutch who are said to have disregarded it in view of 



