There is little furniture in a purely native house; a few rolls of mats, half-a-dozen spoons in a small but long basket fixed to the wall, some large round baskets with covers, and perhaps a tin box containing _làmbas_ for Sunday and special occasions; a few common dishes of native pottery, and perhaps two or three of European make; a horn or a tin _zìnga_, for drinking water; a spade or two—these with the rice mortar and pounder and winnower already mentioned—the water-pots, and the implements for spinning and weaving, constitute about the whole household goods in the dwellings of the poorer classes. The earthen floor is covered with coarse mats, and sometimes the walls are lined with finer mats; in the roof an attic is often formed for a part of or the whole length of the house and is reached by a rude ladder. The floor of this upper chamber is frequently covered over with a layer of earth and is used as a cooking-place, with much advantage to the lower part of the house, which is thus kept comparatively free from smoke and soot. It must be understood the foregoing description applies to the original style of native house, as unaffected by modern innovations. In the capital and the more important places, as well as in many villages, numbers of brick houses, with upper storeys and three or four or more rooms, have been built of late years; and hundreds of six-roomed houses, with verandahs carried on brick pillars, have also been erected, following a model introduced about the year 1870 by the late Rev. J. Pearse. This struck the fancy of the well-to-do people, and similar ones have been built all over the central provinces. [Sidenote: NEST OF BLACK WASP]