140 NATURAL AND ECONOMICAL HISTORY 
Is. 9d. per gallon. Within these few years it has been 
imported into Great Britain, where the same quantity has 
been sold as high as from 5s. to 6s. The quantity exported 
from Ceylon, in 1813, amounted to S7,S65 measures, each 
measure about two pints ; value in rix dollars 
In Ceylon this oil is universally used both by Europeans 
and the indigenous inhabitants, as a lamp-oil. The natives 
burn it in a section of the coco-nut shell, or in a small 
earthen-ware vessel. Some of the upper ranks have brass 
lamps four or five feet high, which have several flat basins, 
with projecting beaks, affixed to a vertical stalk. The oil 
is introduced into the basins, the beaks of which are fur- 
nished with cotton-wicks. Torches are prepared in Siam, 
by drying elephants'' dung, soaking it in coco-nut oil, and 
then covering the mass with long dry leaves tied at short 
distances, with shreds of bamboo. 
The Singalese, and indeed a great proportion of the in- 
habitants of Asia, use considerable quantities of this oil, for 
the purpose of external inunction. It is not easy to ascer- 
tain precisely the benefits they expect to result from this 
practice. Some of the Orientals say, that inunction is used 
for the purpose of preserving their skins from the sun and 
wind. They sometimes anoint their bodies previously to 
going into the bath, probably for the purpose of diminish- 
ing the shock they might feel by a sudden reduction of the 
temperature of the skin : more commonly, however, the 
inunction takes place upon emerging from the water. The 
oil is applied with a considerable degree of friction ; or, as 
Dampier describes the process, " Chafing it for half an 
hour into hair and skin and the whole surface of the 
body, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, 
is generally anointed. It is perhaps more frequently ap- 
plied to the hair of the head than to any other part of the 
body. I cannot, however, learn that they intend to destroy 
