JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [YOL. XVII. 



Mr. Ferguson asked for supplementary information. Would Mr. 

 Lewis tell them what uses palu could be put to and what foreign 

 woods would be superseded, whether those of Western Australia, 

 Burma, or Borneo ? 



Mr. Lewis said he thought palu would hardly supersede those trees ; 

 and there were two reasons why. The one was the intense difficulty 

 there was in working palu, and the other was the ease with which 

 those hard woods from Australia and Borneo were at present brought 

 to Ceylon. Palu was extremely hard and sticky, and the average 

 sawyer objected to sawing it, because he found that his saws stuck in 

 the wood. 



Mr. Coomaraswamy, referring to the alleged medicinal properties 

 of the tamarind, said it was accepted among natives of the country 

 that to sleep under a tamarind tree was to get sufficient ague into the 

 system to last any one for a lifetime ! Among natives tamarind 

 was entirely prohibited when any one was undergoing a course of 

 medicine. 



Farewell to the President. 



7. Mr. John Ferguson, Yice-President, proposed the following 

 Resolution : — 



" That the Council and Members of the Ceylon Branch of the 

 Royal Asiatic Society desire to place on record their special sense of 

 indebtedness to the Right Rev. Dr. Copleston, Bishop of Colombo, 

 Metropolitan-Elect of India, &c, for the very valuable services he has 

 rendered to the Society during the past twenty years, for the learned 

 Papers he has edited in its Journals, and for the instructive Addresses 

 he has given from time to time as its President, an office he has 

 held with great acceptance for seventeen years. That, in now 

 bidding His Lordship farewell, the Council and Members express the 

 earnest hope that he may be long spared in good health in the new and 

 very important sphere to which he has been called." 



Mr Ferguson said that at the Jubilee celebration of that Branch in 

 December, 1895, at which their now retiring President prepared and 

 read an admirable resume of the history of the Society, he (Mr. 

 Ferguson) ventured to remark that no one had done so much, attracted 

 so much public interest in, and increased the prosperity of, the Ceylon 

 Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society as the Bishop of Colombo had 

 done, and that, indeed, he had done more for their Institution than 

 any other Member had during its history of fifty years. (Applause.) 

 He saw no reason to modify that opinion, because His Lordship had 

 been a tower of strength to them during the past six or seven 

 years, and during a long period before that Jubilee celebration. 



They had profited by the prestige appertaining to the Bishop as 

 a learned man, for he was one of whom they might say in the words of 

 the poet : " He is a scholar, and a right good one." (Applause.) As 

 an accomplished linguist and learned Orientalist there were few, if 

 any, in the Island to compare with His Lordship, and he was tempted 

 to illustrate that by remarking on a piece of work outside of the scope 

 of that Society, but which he might be pardoned for introducing as an 



