The province of Chatigan (vulgarly Chitigong) is a noble field for a naturalist. It is so called, I believe, from the chatag, which is the most beautiful little bird I ever saw. The hills and woods abound with uncommon plants and animals; indeed, the whole Eastern peninsula would be a new world to a philosopher. I wish poor Konig had left his papers to you: Banks has too much of his own to employ him; and Macpherson, who loved the sage, would, I dare say, have persuaded lord Cornwallis to raise the best monument to his memorya good edition of his works. I have carefully exa. mined a plant, which Koenig mentioned to me, and called pentapethès protea, from the singular variety of leaves on the same tree: the natives call it maschamchand; and one of its fragrant fleshy blossoms, infused for a night in a glass of water, forms a mucilage of a very cooling quality. The pentapethès phoenicia, which now beautifies this plain, produces a similar mucilage, which might answer the same purposes as that of the Arabian gum, if not other and more important purposes. But I mention this plant, because Koenig told me, that Linnæus had inverted nature in his description of it, by assigning to it five castrated filaments, to each of which were annexed three prolific ones; whereas, said he (I am sure I did not mistake him), the flower has fifteen castrated, and five prolific; so that in truth it would have been pentandrian. Now I have examined all the flowers of this species that I could get, and I find the description of Linnæus to be correct; but there is no accounting for the variety of a protean plant.

Many thanks for your offer of M. D'Hancar

ville; but I have the book, though, like you, I have not read it: I wish to be firm in Sanscrit, before I read systems of mythology. We have sent the first papers of our Transactions to the press, and shall go on as fast as Mr. G.'s compositor will let us. Farewell, my dear sir. Vivere, valere, et philosophari cum paucis, is what I wish for you, as much as for your, &c.

CXVII.

To William Shipley, Esq.*,

Crishna-nagur, Oct. 5, 1786. I BLUSH, my dear şir, in reading, a second or third time, with increasing delight, your excellent letters from Maidstone, when I compare the dates of them

• Brother to the late bishop of St. Asaph, and now in his eighty-ninth year. This gentleman suggested the idea of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Commerce, &c. which was established in 1753; and, in the following year, a gold medal was voted to him by the Society, with an inscription:

TO WILLIAM SHIPLEY,
whose public spirit

gave rise to this

SOCIETY.

with that of my answer. Various, however, are the causes which oblige me to be an indifferent and slow correspondent: first, illness, which had confined me three months to my couch, where your first letter found me on the great river; next, the discharge of an important duty, which falls peculiarly heavy on the Indian judges, who are forced to act as justices of the peace in a populous country, where the police is deplorably bad; then, the difficult study of Hindu and Mohammedan laws, in two copious languages, Sanscrit and Arabic-which studies are inseparably connected with my public duty, and may tend to establish, by degrees, among ten millions of our black subjects, that security of descendable property, a want of which, as you justly observe, has prevented the people of Asia from improving their agriculture and mechanical arts: lastly, I may add, (though rather an amusement than a duty) my pursuit of general literature, which I have here an opportunity of doing, from the fountain head-an opportunity which, if lost, may never be recovered. When I accept, therefore, with gratitude, the honour offered me by your young Hercules, the Maidstone Society, of being one of their corresponding members, I cannot indulge a hope of being a diligent or useful correspondent, unless any discovery should be made by our Indian Socięty, which I may think likely to be of use in our common country. Your various papers I have distributed among those who seemed the likeliest to avail themselves of the rules and hints which they contain. The rapidity of the Ganges makes it extremely difficult to rescue the unhappy persons who are overset in boats,

especially at the time of the bore,* when such accidents most usually happen; but I am confident that the methods prescribed in the little work which you sent me, will often be salutary, even here. Dr. Johnson's tract I have now lent to a medical friend of great ability; and I am particularly interested in the security of our prisons from infection, to which indeed they are less liable in this climate, from our practice of sleeping in a draught of air whenever it can be had. Without this habit, to which I am now inured, we should never be free from putrid disorders.

Should your society be so extended as to admit all Kent, you will, I trust, have an excellent member in one of my oldest college friends, Dr. Breton, of Broughton, near Ashford, who has left no path of science or literature unexplored. We shall print our Transactions with all speed, consistent with accuracy; but as all our members, including even our printer, are men of business, in commerce, revenue, or judicature, we cannot proceed very rapidly, either in giving the public the tracts we have already collected, or in adding to our collection.

The bore is an expression applied to a peculiar swell in the Hughli river, occasioned by the rapid influx of the tide.

CXVIII.

To Sir John Macpherson, Bart.

Calcutta, Nov. 1786.

THE Society heard, with pleasure, the curious account of the lama's inauguration; and the first sheet of their Transactions is printed.

Be assured, that I will ever remember the contents of your own letter; and accept my thanks, for the pleasure which I have received from that of Mr. Adam Ferguson to you: one sentence of it is so wise, and so well expressed, that I read it till I had it by heart: "Justice to the stranger," &c.

I am correcting proofs of our Transactions, which will, I hope, satisfy Mr. Ferguson as to the theology of the Hindus. By rising before the sun, I allot an hour every day to Sanscrit, and am charmed with knowing so beautiful a sister of Latin and Greek.

Magnum vectigal est parcimonia, is an aphorism which I learned early from Cicero. The public, if