rewards for the destruction of 322,421 venomous reptiles. 19. The insect world is not less profusely represented than the other divisions of animated creation, and though it successfully does its best to make life disagreeable to those who have not sufficient wealth to protect themselves by costly and ingenious devices, it seems ridiculous to mention the tiny nuisance in one breath with the huge standing disaster the country possesses in its tigers and snakes. Besides, there are two insects which in almost any land would be considered a sufficient source of income, and which here step in as an incidental and secondary resource. They are the insect that produces the valuable and inimitable lac-dye, and especially the silk-worm. This latter, like the tea plant, we are apt to hold as originally the exclusive property of China, and imported thence into every country where it is raised. Yet it appears that it is as much an indigenous native of India as of China, like several other products, and, among them, that most vital one-rice. The mulberry tree, of course, is cultivated in connection with the silk industry, but by no means universally, as there are many varieties of the worm which content themselves with other plants. That which feeds on the leaves of the ashvattha (Ficus Religiosa) is called deva (divine), on account of the sacredness of the tree, and very highly prized-nor altogether on superstitious grounds, for the thread it spins is said to be quite equal, if not superior, to that of the mulberry worm, both in glossy beauty and flexible strength; perhaps this may be the effect of a gum-like substance contained in the sap of both this tree and the banyan, and which in both frequently exudes from the bark, thickens into a kind of caoutchouc, and is gathered for sale and use. name. 20. Even so brief and cursory a review of India's physical traits and resources would be incomplete without some mention of the mineral wealth which, for ages, has been pre-eminently associated with the To say "India" was to evoke visions of gold, diamonds, pearls, and all manner of precious stones. These visions, to be just, were made more than plausible by the samples which reached the west from time to time in the form of treasures of untold variety and value, either in the regular ways of trade, from the Phoenicians down, or by that shorter road of wholesale robbery which men call conquest; and indeed, but for the glamour of such visions and the covetousness they bred, India might not have seen most of the nations of Europe fight for a place on her soil, from a mere foothold to whole realms, and might have remained free from invasion and foreign rule. Yet, strangely enough, it now turns out that her chief and real mineral worth lies not so much in the gold and precious stones whose glitter fascinated the nations far and near, as in the less showy but far more permanently useful and inexhaustible minerals and ores: the coal fields which underlie most of central Dekhan; the natural petroleum wells of Penjâb, Assam, and Burma; the salt which both sea and inland salt lakes yield abundantly by evaporation, and which in the northeast of Penjâb is quarried like any stone from a range of solid salt cliffs, unrivalled for purity and extent; the saltpetre which covers immense surfaces of the soil in the upper valleys of the Ganges; the iron which is found in almost all parts of the continent; the rich copper mines of the lower Himâlayas, not to speak of various quarries-building stone, marble, slate, etc. As for gold, although India has always distinctly ranked as a gold-producing country, and many of her rivers have been known from oldest times to carry gold, and goldwashing has always been going on in a small way here and there and everywhere, so that the metal probably exists in many places, and very possibly in large quantities, yet the industry of gold-seeking does not appear to thrive; it is carried on in a desultory, unbusinesslike manner which yields but meagre returns. Silver is no longer found anywhere in the country, and the famed diamonds of Golconda are nothing nowadays but a legendary name, nor are other gems, with the exception, perhaps, of carnelian, onyx, agate, and lapis lazuli, found in much. greater abundance; either the deposits are exhausted, or, more probably, the enormous quantities which came out of the country in the way of presents, trade, and conquest, and those which still partly fill the treasuries of native princes and temples, were due to accumulation through the many, many centuries of India's seclusion, before the land became known and open to other nations. 21. But all and more than the visionary legends of fantastic wealth coupled with the name of India gen |