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St>me Account, Historical, Geographical [July 



The rock snake is uncommon, but there are numbers of green snakes that 

 glide among the foliage of the trees, from which they are with difficulty 

 discernible. There is a countless variety of insects, among the most 

 useful of which rank the silk-worm, the lac insect, and the honey-bee. 



Trees and Plants most useful to man. — The most useful timber trees 

 grow on the Nulla Mulla and Lanca Mulla hills, on the east of the dis- 

 tricts, and in the Sondur and Kumply ranges, on the west. These hilly 

 tracts produce teak, blackwood,moochie and chandan woods; abundance 

 of excellent bambus and other woods used for building, agricultural im- 

 plements and for fuel. In the sandy alluvial flats, and moist low grounds, 

 especially towards the eastern frontier, the feathery cocoa-nut, the grace- 

 ful palmyra ( Borassus fiabelliformh), used for rafters, the odoriferous 

 dwarf date {Elate sylvestris) abound. The plains yield trees and shrubs, 

 many of which are employed in medicine, agriculture, and the arts — the 

 indigofera ccerulea, yielding a blue dve, the kusum or carthamus tine- 

 torias, pink and scarlet, the muddi (Terminalia alata), and the Morinda 

 eitrifolia, yielding red dyes, the common milk-hedge used as a black dye 

 for leather, turmeric, the Parlnmonia, the nim or margosa useful for 

 its timber, and the bitter medicinal oil expressed from its seeds, the 

 sacred banyan, the jaman, the juice of which is employed to precipitate 

 the colouring matter of the indigo, the graceful tamarind whose acidul- 

 ous fruit is used as an article of food in medicine, dyeing, and other arts 

 affords a strong durable timber, though the natives I am assured are averse 

 to its use in house-building. The bark of the useful and hardy Acacia 

 Arabica, or babul tree, often the only prominent object in the boundless 

 plain, is used in tanning, and in medicine, its wood for the harder imple- 

 ments of agriculture, the thicker branches for tent pegs ; and the gum, 

 which closely resembles that of the Arabian tree, in medicine and the 

 arts. The bark of the turwer (Cassia auriculata), the amuldas (Cassia 

 fistula), and the juice of the yercum (Asclepias gigantea), is used in 

 staining and preparing leather : the latter and the milk-hedge afford the 

 charcoal used by natives in the preparation of gunpowder. The flowers 

 of the Nyctanihes are used as a yellow dye, and the leaves of the shum- 

 huli (Vitex negundo), that loves the sandy beds of rivulets, and the fruit 

 of the trailing Elaterium in medicine. The wild oleander, whose delici- 

 ously scented flowers are held sacred by the natives, grows in luxuriance 

 on the banks of the Tumbuddra. The verdant guruwi (Ixora parviflora) t 

 whose branches are universally used as torches, is found growing on the 

 low jungly hills. The shrub jatropha glandulifera is almost confined to 

 the cotton ground plains. That singular siliceous substance tabashir, is 

 produced in the joints of the bambus that cluster t\e eastern forests, and 



