MYSORE, CANARA, AND MALABAR. 57 
flogged until lie gave his consent. A loss of cast, of course, en- CHAPTER 
sued; but the husband commonly fled out of Tippoo’s dominions, 
leaving his wife behind, to want, or prostitution. On going to 
another place, and turning away his unclean wife, he could get an 
absolution from his Guru , with permission to marry again. 
The hedges here, like those which I saw yesterday, are very bad Fences* 
fences, and are made of the Euphorbium antiquorum. When the 
ground is sown, the farmers fill up the gaps with thorns cut from 
the Mimosa indica of Lamarck. This tree is allowed to grow pro- 
miscuously through the fields, and its branches are lopped off for 
fewel, and for repairing the fences. Its shade does not injure the 
crops, and its timber is valuable for making ploughs, and other 
instruments of agriculture. 
Mundium is a poor village, fortified by a mud wall that has been Mmdiwn. 
rebuilt since the restoration of the Raja’s government. It was for- 
merly an Agrarum , or village bestowed in charity on the Brahmans * 
They were deprived of it by Tippoo , when he annexed to the Circar 
or public, all the property of that kind. 
In the evening a flight of locusts passed over the town. It ex- Locusts, 
tended in length probably about three miles; its width was about 
a hundred yards, and its height fifty feet. The insects passed from 
west to east in the direction of the wind, at the rate of six or seven 
miles an hour. The whole ground, and every tree and bush, was 
covered with them ; but each individual halted for a very short 
time on any one spot. They went in a very close body, and left 
behind them very few stragglers. In an hour after the flock had 
passed, few were to be discovered in the neighbourhood of the 
town. The stragglers from the grand body did not extend above 
a hundred yards on each side of it, and were perliaps not more 
than one to the cubic foot. In the middle of the flock four times 
that number must be allowed to the same space. I could not perceive, 
that in their passage they did the smallest damage to any vegetable ; 
but I was informed, that last year a flock passed, when the crop 
VOL. I. I 
