Note 1 — CHAP. III.

: The vegetable poisons, the use of which is ascribed to the Singhalese, are chiefly the seeds of the Datura, which act as a powerful narcotic, and those of the Croton tiglium, the excessive effect of which ends in death. The root of the Nerium odorum is equally fatal, as is likewise the exquisitely beautiful Gloriosa superba, whose brilliant flowers festoon the jungle in the plains of the low country. See Bennett's account of the Antiaris, in HORSFIELD'S Plantæ Javanicæ.

2: Catalogue of Bombay Plants, p. 193. The process in Ceylon is thus described in Sir W. HOOKER'S Report on the Vegetable Products exhibited in Paris in 1855: "The trees chosen for the purpose measure above a foot in diameter. The felled trunks are cut into lengths, and the bark is well beaten with a stone or a club till the parenchymatous part comes off, leaving only the inner bark attached to the wood; which is thus easily drawn out by the hand. The bark thus obtained is fibrous and tough, resembling a woven fabric: it is sewn at one end into a sack, which is filled with sand, and dried in the sun."