xii. Appendix :■— Proceedings of 



pensation we can render for their subscriptions as well as for 

 their unwearied and disinterested co-operation. By our Jour- 

 nals also, we maintain, better than by other means, our con- 

 nection with the Parent and all other kindred Societies. Nor 

 is the country whose peculiarities it is our duty to describe 

 and investigate, at all deficient in interest ; indeed there is, 

 on the contrary, scarcely a region of the earth where such a 

 rich harvest is ripe and ready for the most various-enquiry, or 

 from which such a Society as our own could draw so large a 

 crop of useful facts. Besides having been the great head 

 quarters of Budhism, and long the seat of an active and splen- 

 did monarchy, Ceylon is the theatre were nature has displayed 

 as many and as curious attractions as any portion of the 

 Globe. But though compact and full of interest, the Island 

 has been but indifferently examined ; the world knows almost 

 as little of Ceylon as it does of Java, and certainly, as far as 

 History is concerned, far less than it does of China. "We 

 have been so partial and fragmentary in our Geological in- 

 vestigations, that we possess no summary of those probable 

 contingencies which gave to it an existence. Botany has been 

 almost as much overlooked. Long before this time, had his 

 valuable life been spared, we should have derived from the 

 great talents and the large experience of Dr. Gardner, a know- 

 ledge of that wonderful vegetable wealth wherewith we are 

 so profusely surrounded ; but even if he had been spared to 

 us, it is more than probable that he would have left the wide 

 field of the algce almost untouched. As it is, your Committee 

 cannot congratulate the Society on the amount of its botanical 

 facts ; the admission is made with regret, the more so as it ap- 

 plies to Conchology, Meteorology, Natural History, Archaeo- 

 logy, and in a great degree to other sciences and subdivisions 

 of sciences. Your Committee, among other deficiencies which 

 they would wish to see supplied, remark the general absence 

 of Historical contributions. This is the more to be regretted, 

 as it is generally felt that the history of Ceylon abounds in all 



