_Administration._--The government of Bombay is administered by a governor in council consisting of the governor as president and two ordinary members. The governor is appointed from England; the council is appointed by the crown, and selected from the Indian civil service. These are the executive members of government. For making laws there is a legislative council, consisting of the governor and his executive council, with certain other persons, not fewer than eight or more than twenty, at least half of them being non-officials. Each of the members of the executive council has in his charge one or two departments of the government; and each department has a secretary, an under-secretary, and an assistant secretary, with a numerous staff of clerks. The political administration of the native states is under the superintendence of British agents placed at the principal native courts; their position varies in different states according to the relations in which the principalities stand with the paramount power. The administration of justice throughout the presidency is conducted by a high court at Bombay, consisting of a chief justice and seven puisne judges, along with district and assistant judges throughout the districts of the presidency. The administration of the districts is carried on by collectors, assistant collectors, and a varying number of supernumerary assistants. _History._--In the earliest times of which any record remains the greater part of the west coast of India was occupied by Dravidian tribes, living under their kings in fortified villages, carrying on the simpler arts of life, and holding a faith in which the propitiation of spirits and demons played the chief part. There is evidence, however, that so early as 1000 B.C. an export trade existed to the Red Sea by way of East Africa, and before 750 B.C. a similar trade had sprung up with Babylon by way of the Persian Gulf. It was by this latter route that the traders brought back to India the Brahmi alphabet, the art of brick-making and the legend of the Flood. Later still the settlement of Brahmans along the west coast had already Aryanized the country in religion, and to some extent in language, before the Persian conquest of the Indus valley at the close of the 6th century B.C. The Persian dominion did not long survive; and the march of Alexander the Great down the Indus paved the way for Chandragupta and the Maurya empire. Under this empire Ujjain was the seat of a viceroy, a prince of the imperial house, who ruled over Kathiawar, Malwa and Gujarat. On the death of Asoka in 231 B.C. the empire of the Mauryas broke up, and their heritage in the west fell to the Andhra dynasty of the Satavahanas of Paithan on the Godavari, a Dravidian family whose dominion by 200 B.C. stretched across the peninsula from the deltas of the Godavari and Kistna to Nasik and the Western Ghats. About A.D. 210, however, their power in the west