petalis, sub-conformibus, obovatis, repandis laete purpureis, vexillo coccineo-purpureo, colore saturate venoso, carinae petalis distantibus, odor Copaivae!  Stam. 5 declinata, cum petalis, alternantia.  Ovaria 2! anticum posticumque, longe stipetata, difformia superiore minore, aborticate, ambobus vexillo oppositis!  Stylus ruber pallide; stigma capitatum.  One B. variegata, W. Roxb.  Fl.  Indic. vol. ii. p.319, quamvis auctor de ovario antico silet.

Two snakes were captured, approaching in shape to the green snake of the Coromandel Coast.  Under surface throughout bright gamboge colour; upper surface throughout, excepting about a span or less of the back of the neck, bright ochraceous brown.  The space above alluded to is in one faintly, in the other strongly variegated with black and white.  Irides, gamboge-coloured.

March 26th.—­Visited the amber mines, which are situated on a range of low hills, perhaps 150 feet above the plain of Meinkhoon, from which they bear S.W.  The distance of the pits now worked is about six miles, of which three are passed in traversing the plain, and three in the low hills which it is requisite to cross.  These are thickly covered with tree jungle.  The first pits, which are old, occur about one mile within the hills.  Those now worked occupy the brow of a low hill, and on this spot they are very numerous; the pits are square, about four feet in diameter, and of very variable depth; steps, or rather holes, are cut in two of the faces of the square by which the workmen ascend and descend.  The instruments used are wooden-lipped with iron crowbars, by which the soil is displaced; this answers but very imperfectly for a pickaxe:  small wooden shovels, baskets for carrying up the soil, etc., buckets of bark to draw up the water, bamboos, the base of the rhizoma forming a hook for drawing up the baskets, and the Madras lever for drawing up heavy loads.

The soil throughout the upper portion, and indeed for a depth of 15 to 20 feet, is red and clayish, and appears to inclose but small pieces of lignite; the remainder consists of greyish slate clay increasing in density as the pits do in depth:  in this occur strata of lignite very imperfectly formed, which gives the grey mineral a slaty fracture, and among this the amber is found. {78} The deepest pit was about 40 feet, and the workmen had then come to water.  All the amber I saw, except a few pieces, occurred as very small irregular deposits, and in no great abundance.  The searching occupies but little time, as they look only among the lignite, which is at once obvious.  No precautions are taken to prevent accidents from the falling in of the sides of the pits, which are in many places very close to each other (within two feet):  but the soil is very tenacious.