4. The Sâgar mint was erected in 1820 by Captain Presgrave, the assay master, and used to employ four hundred men, but, after about ten or twelve years, the business was transferred to Calcutta, and the buildings converted to other uses (_C. P. Gazetteer_, 1870). Mints are now kept up at Calcutta and Bombay only. The Biâs is a small stream flowing into the Sunâr river, and belonging to the Jumna river system. The name is printed Beeose in the original edition. 5. Since the author's time the conditions have been completely changed by the introduction of railways. The East Indian, Great Indian Peninsular, and other railways now enter the Nerbudda Valley, so that the produce of most districts can be readily transported to distant markets. A large enhancement of the land revenue has been obtained by revisions of the settlement. 6. Details will be found in the _Central Provinces Gazetteer_ (1870). The references are collected under the head 'Iron' in the index to that work. Chapter VIII of _Ball's Economic Geology of India_ gives full information concerning the iron mines of the Central Provinces and all parts of India. That work forms Part III of the _Manual of the Geology of India_. 7. The soil of the valley of the Nerbudda, and that of the Nerbudda and Sâgar territories generally, is formed for the most part of the detritus of trap-rocks that everywhere covered the sandstone of the Vindhya and Sâtpura ranges which run through these territories. This basaltic detritus forms what is called the black cotton soil by the English, for what reason I know not. [W. H. S.] The reason is that cotton is very largely grown in the Nerbudda Valley, both on the black soil and other soils. In Bundêlkhand the black, friable soil, often with a high proportion of organic matter, is called 'mâr', and is chiefly devoted to raising crops of wheat, gram, or chick-pea (_Cicer arietinum_), linseed, and joâr (_Holcus sorghum_). Cotton is also sown in it, but not very generally. This black soil requires little rain, and is fertile without manure. It absorbs water too freely to be suitable for irrigation, and in most seasons does not need it. The 'black cotton soil' is often known as _regur_, a corruption of a Tamil word. 'The origin of _regur_ is a doubtful question. . . . The dark coloration was attributed by earlier writers to vegetable matter, and taken to indicate a large amount of humus in the soil; more recent investigations make this doubtful, and in all probability the colour is due to mineral constitution rather than to the very scanty organic constituents of the soil,' It may possibly be formed of 'wind-borne dust', like the loess plains of China (Oldham, in _The Oxford Survey of the British Empire_, vol. ii, Asia, p. 9: Oxford, 1914).