leaf, in which the piece of an arecanut is mixed with some lime out of oyster and muscle shells, and so put into the mouth and chewed. Out of the beetle leaves, during the preparation, the fibres that are hard and rough are first drawn to the leaf; the form of a little horn is then given, open at the bottom, and pointed at the top, which when the areca-nut is inserted is closed, and so chewed." Not only the name, but also the preparation. will be given in our passage; they draw, it is said, the fibres first out of the leaves (þuλλa), roll these then together, and make little balls out of them; the purified leaves are called betre, from which certainly the name malabathrum (betre of Malabar) is derived. There are three sorts of beetle, distinguished by the above-mentioned names, that are given from the largeness or the tenderness of the leaves, about which we have found no explanation in later writers. If it is now proved that the last half of the passage of Periplus treats of the beetle, so it follows that the use of the same was already commonly spread through India. Whether it reached up to great antiquity, must, however, remain undecided. In the Sanscrit writings that are known to us, there appears no distinct account of it; unless people will accept as an account of it, in the description of the great banquet in Ramajana, 1. p. 463, the dishes to chew that are mentioned among others.

Opium.-Opium is now so important an object of commerce in the East, particularly through the importation to China from Bengal, which all the prohibitions of government could not hinder, (and when the monopoly of the East India Company ceases, will become yet more so,) that the inquiry about its origin becomes a matter of high interest. It is, it is true, now produced in many lands of south and middle Asia; but yet Bengal must be considered as the chief country of the same, where the poppy is cultivated, from which it is prepared in such immeasurable quantities.

The earliest traces of it are perhaps to be found in the fragments which we have out of the Indica of Ctesias, partly in the extract of Photius, partly in separate citations, particularly from Elian in his Historia Animalium.

Ctesias, the contemporary of Xenephon, lived, as is well known, as physician in great consideration at the court of Artaxerxes II. whom he had cured of an illness. Of his writings the Indica are particularly important, as regards our inquiry. It is, however, the more necessary to inform ourselves of the subject of this work, as in the following article it will be the source from which we draw; it is, however, evidently nothing but a collection of traditions, which went all over India to the Persians, and in this point of view must it be considered. India, the neighbouring land to their empire, with which they stood in political and commercial relations, was to them the land of marvels; and as it is the highest mountain-land of our earth, and is so rich in natural wonders, can we be surprised if these traditions are often pushed into fable? and can we hold Ctesias for an intentional inventor, if he repeats them as he heard them? They certainly, however, may lead to important historical explanations, if one is in a position to find out the truth in the tradition. This must then be our task. The fragment which in our opinion relates to opium, is found in the above-mentioned work of Ælian, b. iv. chapter 41. It is as follows:"In India there is a sort of bird as big as the egg of a partridge; it is of a yellow colour, and makes its nest on the mountains; the Indians call it (dikaipov). If any one takes of the dung of these birds, so much as a grain of millet-seed, and in the morning drinks it dissolved in water, he falls asleep, and must die in the evening. Poets, however, paint it as the sweetest and pleasantest death in the world; the Indians on that account place the greatest value on the possession of the same, for they hold it in fact as an oblivion of evil; and thus the King of India sends it as one of the most costly presents to the Persian King, who treasures it as a preservative and preventative of incurable ills in time of need; therefore, among the Persians, no one possesses it but the King and the King's mother." Now, is it opium that is treated of in this fragment? If it did not begin with the fabulous account of the bird's dung, one would certainly,

without further argument, accede to the belief, because opium moderately enjoyed, puts one into an exalted and dream like state, but if taken in greater quantity, it will kill, as is well known.

According to Kämpfer's description, the pod of the poppy is slit up, out of which slits the juice issues forth, hardens, and acquires a brown hue; it is then put into hot water, in a thin wooden vessel, so that the juice melts together, and out of it little balls or pills are prepared. This might well occasion the tradition of the bird's dung; and yet there must be something historical at the bottom but the extraordinary part of it is, that the kind of bird is so thoroughly described, that there can be no mistake about it; it is as small as a partridge's egg, and of a yellow colour, and this sort of bird is a native of India. In our system, the sartoria, or tailor-bird, is so called from the ingenious preparation of its little nest, which it makes out of two dry leaves sewn together. It is described and painted in Forster's Zoologia Indica, Tab. VIII. "It is quite yellow, hardly three inches long; its eggs not much bigger than the ant's eggs." Compare Gautier Schontius' Voyage aux Indes, III. p. 581, which describes it as large as a large hazel-nut. Now it is a known fact, that several of the small kinds of birds are very fond of, and greedily devour poppy-seed. Should this also be the case with the tati, which it will at least very probably be found to be, the legend would thus become sufficiently explained. That similar accounts also, not without historical foundation, are spread abroad about the cinnamon bird, is already known from Herodotus. As is customary-in order to secure their monopoly-people have endeavoured to conceal the origin of costly articles of commerce. Now, if in that passage opium is the thing spoken of, which may be received as true till a better explanation can be found, the following results are derived.

I. It is an Indian production; but has, however, spread itself over the rest of the East. II. The country, properly speaking, of the same, is that part of India where it is cultivated in the greatest quantities-the lower Ganges countries, particularly Bahor. Here

lay the chief city of the Indians of that time; Palibothra, the residence of their kings. In the age of Ctesias, the use of opium was well known; nevertheless, not commonly diffused, as it is mentioned there as a great rarity. Certainly, however, it had not yet spread itself beyond India, as it was sent as something costly to the King of Persia, and preserved in his treasure-room. Equally from this, as also from other examples, is it clear that a friendly connection existed between the Persian and Indian sovereigns, because they sent each other presents; which again supposes embassies, and also renders commercial relations probable.

Attar of Roses.-From the countries of the Ganges, turn we now to the celebrated Cashmer, which in fact is not watered by the Indus, but however by one of its neighbouring rivers, the Behut or Chelum, the Hydaspes of the ancients, to whose water-dominion it thus belongs. The question whether Cashmer was known in the Persian age, depends very much upon whether it is one and the same with Herodotus's Caspatyrus; which we should rather have doubted, but which is affirmatively demonstrated by Ritter, with whose opinion we willingly coincide. Not only the country of Cashmer, but also its dominion, as of an important city, will be thereby understood. Without repeating his geographical argument, we confirm it through the citation of its products, among which we first mention Attar of Roses. In the fragment of Ctesias, chap. 28, we read the following-" There is a tree in India as high as the cedar or cypress; its leaves are like those of the palm, only something broader; it grows like the male laurel, but bears no fruit. It is called in Indian, karpion, in Greek (μvpópoda) rose-ointment; it is however rare. From it come drops of oil that are mixed with wool, and put in an alabaster box; the colour of it is deep red, and thick; it possesses, above all, the most delicious perfume; it is said that the scent rises to the height of five stadia. The king, however, and his relations, alone possess it; but the king of India sends some of it to the king of Persia. Ctesias himself has seen and smelt it; the smell is indescrib

able, and surpasses all others." That here attar of roses is the thing treated of, we learn by the name; it is a product of Cashmer, the rose of that place of a particular species, from which it is prepared, is celebrated throughout the east; the costliness of this attar of roses that now comes from Persia, is also known to us, where, like gold, it is weighed by the drop. Whence, however, comes the false declaration, that it is obtained from a high tree? It is explained by what the British traveller, Forster, recounts of both the trees in the gardens of Cashmer; "the first is the Oriental platanus, that here reaches its greatest perfection, with silvercoloured bark, and pale green leaves, that resemble a flat hand; however, the celebrated rose from which the attar is made, bears the palm from all the other trees." Can it appear strange, that standing near each other in the Royal gardens which Ctesias mentions, chap. 30, and also Forster visited, their products should be confounded?

If, however, attar of roses be the thing here spoken of, great historical results may be derived. Cashmer had formerly its own kings, which also its annals lately made known to us confirm. It was thus no Persian province, if even the Persian dominion could reach to its neighbourhood; but it maintained, however, a friendly connexion, since presents of attar of roses, and costly garments, as will become evident below, were sent to the Persian court. Probably there

even

came natives of Cashmer to Persia. Ctesias recounts, that he had seen there two women and five men, Indians, of a white colour-the clear complexions of the natives of Cashmer are known; and if presents were sent thence, it could hardly be otherwise than through the subjects of the King of Cashmer. The royal gardens of which Ctesias speaks, chap. 18, are also described by Bernier, the first modern traveller, who visited Cashmer in the suite of the Great Mogul Aureng Zeb, namely, the garden of the old kings, called Achiavel. Bernier mentions in the same, a remarkable spring that so strongly resembles that described by Ctesias, chap. 30, that one may hold it to be the same. "The fountain," says Ctesias, " breaks forth out of a rock GENT. MAG. VOL. III.

with such power, that it flings again into the air whatever is thrown into it; the water is very cold, but beautiful, and gentlemen and ladies of rank bathe in it for their health."-" In the garden of the old kings of Cashmer," says Bernier, "the most remarkable thing is a source that divides itself into many canals in the garden; it breaks out of the earth with such force, that one might rather call it a river than a spring; the water is uncommonly beautiful, but so cold, that one can hardly hold one's hand in it." Also, hot springs, which could hardly be wanting in so mountainous a country, are described by Ctesias as well as later travellers.

Shawl-wool, and its country.—From Cashmer we now turn to the countries that touch it on the east, and which twenty-five years ago first began to emerge out of entire darkness. We owe this to the British discoverers who made their way here with a courage worthy of admiration. Captain Raper, Herbert, Webb, Hodgson, and lastly, in particular, the brothers Gerard and Moorcroft. The aim of these travellers was to discover the sources of the Indus and Ganges, and of their neighbouring rivers the Sedledg and Jumna; this they accomplished. Raper and Webb, 1908, got to the sources of the Ganges; Moorcroft, 1812, to those of the Indus and Sedledg; this led them to the parts of India in the interior of Himalaya, that are the most important to us. Their results are made known in the "Asiatic Researches," particularly the volumes 12 and 15, and chiefly from those collected by Ritter, and accompanied with an excellent map of Himalaya, without which our present inquiry would hardly have been successful. Our task is thus to compare the views of the ancients, especially Ctesias, with the accounts of the British travellers, and to try how far these can be cleared up in so doing. That the above remarks upon Ctesias are also of importance, is obvious; the inquiry cannot limit itself to Cashmer, it must stretch to the sources of the Indus and Sedledg, for it is known that the shawl. wool, properly the fine wool of the buck (goat), if even it is worked in Cashmer, comes nevertheless from the far eastern lands.

4 K

An Historical Essay on Architecture. By the late Thomas Hope. Illustrated from Drawings made by him in Italy and Germany. 8vo, pp. 561. HOW deeply is it to be regretted that a composition like the present, in which the history of one of the noblest of the fine arts is investigated with the research of the antiquary, the learning of the scholar, and the caution of the philosopher, and which at the same time displays in its language the elegance and refinement of the polished gentleman, should be a posthumous work! What a loss has the science experienced in the death of one who, unfettered by the trammels of a professional education, free from the prejudices of the architect's narrow school of instruction, and at the same time endued with a mind liberal and enlarged, is enabled to take the widest and most extended view of his subject! By such men, and by such alone, can its remote history and origin be traced and developed. If the investigation be not aided by a mind so constituted, if it be not accompanied by an instinctive feeling of elegance and taste, the task of research will be idle and vain.

The origin of architecture is to be sought in the wants which mankind, even in the most primeval state, must have experienced. "In all regions men have felt the necessity of adding to the covering which is carried about the person, and which we call attire, another covering more extended, more detached, more stationary, for the purpose of ampler comfort and of greater security, and which might be able, with his body, to include such goods as he possessed." The peculiar style and character of the buildings erected under the influence of this necessity, when not borrowed from another people, would be dependant upon and influenced by the contingencies of soil, atmosphere, and material, afforded by the local situation of the dwellings of the inventors.

The several styles of the ancient world afford evidence of the truth of this proposition. When in the earliest ages some Tartar hordes roamed from

the "elevated and central plains of

Asia," and fixed their habitation in a more fertile country, changing their pastoral for an agricultural life, and adopting a stationary residence in lieu of the fragile tent of skins which had previously formed their temporary and only dwelling, when one branch of the wanderers was fixed in China, and a second in India, and we find them acting on the impulse to which their new wants and necessities gave birth; we see that in China, though their fixed habitations scarcely amount to architecture, the original tent remains in the form and disposition of the building to which it gave way, affording to this day an evidence of the original manners of the inhabitants; not so, in the latter country, where the exchange of the "cool heights of Thibet for the burning plains of Hindostan," led the settlers to seek some retreat from the sun's rays; and to avert this inconvenience, they dug in the barren rocks, which surrounded the vast plains of their newly acquired possessions, habitations immoveable as the earth itself. "Thus arose the stupendous excavations of the Bahar; thus were formed, along the banks of the Ganges and the Barampooter, those cities of caves, of which some served as retreats for the living, while others were left as a receptacle for the dead." But in time the population advanced into the plains, and they then became necessitated to raise, on the surface of the ground, the dwelling which, near the brow of the rock, they had dug out of its bowels; in this way arose the stationary habitation, the insulated building, but which, in its dark and cavern-like form, still partook of its model, the primeval excavation.

The African tribes, descending in like manner from the mountains of Ethiopia to people the valley of Egypt, from similar operating causes, found it necessary to construct excavations; and their works, and the same train of circumstances, ended in the erection of the temple and the pyramid.

The existence of some general features in the buildings of Egypt and India have given rise to an opinion