excellence “maha ledda,” the great “sickness;” they look upon it as a special manifestation of devidosay, “the displeasure of the gods;” and the attraction of the cheetahs to the bed of the sufferer they attribute to the same indignant agency.  A few years ago, the capua, or demon-priest of a “dewale,” at Oggalbodda, a village near Caltura, when suffering under small-pox, was devoured by a cheetah, and his fate was regarded by those of an opposite faith as a special judgment from heaven.

Such is the awe inspired by this belief in connection with the small-pox, that a person afflicted with it is always approached as one in immediate communication with the deity; his attendants, address him as “my lord,” and “your lordship,” and exhaust on him the whole series of honorific epithets in which their language abounds for approaching personages of the most exalted rank.  At evening and morning, a lamp is lighted before him, and invoked with prayers to protect his family from the dire calamity which has befallen himself.  And after his recovery, his former associates refrain from communication with him until a ceremony shall have been performed by the capua, called awasara-pandema, or “the offering of lights for permission,” the object of which is to entreat permission of the deity to regard him as freed from the divine displeasure, with liberty to his friends to renew their intercourse as before.

Major SKINNER, who for upwards of forty years has had occasionally to live for long periods in the interior, occupied in the prosecution of surveys and the construction of roads, is strongly of opinion that the disposition of the leopard towards man is essentially pacific, and that, when discovered, its natural impulse is to effect its escape.  In illustration of this I insert an extract from one of his letters, which describes an adventure highly characteristic of this instinctive timidity:—­

“On the occasion of one of my visits to Adam’s Peak, in the prosecution of my military reconnoissances of the mountain zone, I fixed on a pretty little patena (i.e., meadow) in the midst of an extensive and dense forest in the southern segment of the Peak Range, as a favourable spot for operations.  It would have been difficult, after descending from the cone of the peak, to have found one’s way to this point, in the midst of so vast a wilderness of trees, had not long experience assured me that good game tracks would be found leading to it, and by one of them I reached it.  It was in the afternoon, just after one of those tropical sunshowers that decorate every branch and blade with pendant brilliants, and the little patena was covered with game, either driven to the open space by the drippings from the leaves or tempted by the freshness of the pasture:  there were several pairs of elk, the bearded antlered male contrasting finely with his mate; and other varieties of game in a profusion not to be found in any place frequented by man.  It was some time before I would allow them to be disturbed by the rude fall of the axe, in our necessity to establish our bivouac for the night, and they were so unaccustomed to danger that it was long before they took alarm at our noises.