can discover any thing in their persons, colour, or appearance, which marks a foreign origin.

I should abuse the patience of the Society if I were to add more to this brief and uninteresting sketch of their early history. The dimness of the few and scattered lights which remain to us leaves much to regret, and yet enables us to see enough to admire and reverence. A church that traces its descent without question from the III century, and with great show of reason from the very age of the Apostles, is in itself venerable. That they have preserved themselves with very slender means of intercourse with other churches pure from surrounding heathenism, may well be considered as a moral phenomenon; and that they have continued in the midst of much error, to preserve unshaken their reverence for the Divine Oracles as the only source of truth and the only final appeal in controversy, while they give its due weight to tradition as an historical evidence, is one of the most singular features in a church so situated, and gives the brightest hope of their ultimate reformation. (To be continued.)

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II. The drawings from which the annexed prints have been taken, as well as the following account were furnished to the Madras Literary Society by Captain (now Lieut. Colonel) Bowler.

(No. 1.)

Drawing of a cluster of very remarkable Palmyra Trees, growing in the cutchery compound at Masulipatam.

They are called by the Hindoos

and also

In the former the name of the deity Ramah is prefixed merely to denote something curious, or remarkable; and not on account of their being supposed to possess any peculiar virtue. The second name implies a barren tree.

They produce a kind of nut, in shape and colour perfectly resembling the fruit of the proper Palmyra, but it is of no use from being almost entirely a hard solid substance.

The leaves are very small, and the trees very slender, in comparison with the proper Palmyra.

The height of the tallest is 50 feet.

(No. 2.)

W. S. BOWLER.

This tree which is in a low jungle about 4 miles in a south westerly direction from Chicacole, seems to be of precisely the same species as those in the cutchery compound at Masulipatam, a

drawing, and description of which I forwarded to the Secretary in the early part of the year 1824.

By the inhabitants of the neighbouring hamlet of Kongaram, it is called Ko-dady, a Teloogoo compound term for an useless Palmyra. It is supposed to be 100 years old. It differs in every respect from the common Palmyra. The stems are slender, and the fruit is a hard solid substance, which after being steeped in water for a few days, is well beaten, and used by the natives as brushes to white wash their houses. The leaves are very small and narrow, and the stalk is denticulated with many sharp curved thorns, from which circumstance the natives say it resembles the back bone of a shark, and on this account the people of the adjacent villages carry it in their hand when travelling through the jungles as a weapon of defence, and also during some of their festivals. The Sunasies also, whenever they can procure them, carry such stalks in their hand, and impose upon the ignorant natives by attributing to them many surprising virtues, and pretending they cut them from a curious tree which grows in a large forest at an incalculable dis

tance.

The inhabitants of Kongaram, and the neighbouring hamlets, look upon this tree as the guardian of their jungle, and hold it in some degree of veneration conceiving it has, as I am told its Sanscrit name* Kulpavroochum, implies, the power of fulfilling the desires and wishes of mankind, at least such as from pureness of heart and morals, have faith in its supposed virtues.

The inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, go annually, at the fall of the leaf, in procession to this tree, and the ceremony terminates in the sacrifice of chickens, pigs, &c.

This tree was much injured and lost many of its heads in the violent storm of 1812.

CHICACOLE:

W. S. BOWLER, Major

1st February, 1826.

Supt. of Roads, N. D.

(No. 3.)

The Palmyra tree, from which this drawing was taken, is on the bank of a tank at Neddoomole, amongst many others of the usual species. It is of the natural size, and each head produces the fruit in a perfect state. It is called

W. S. BOWLER.

A holy tree in the gardens of Indra. It is said in the Pooranas to have been found in the Ocean when Crishna churned it, and that it was giv. en to Indra telling him that it would grant the wishes of all beings,