Around these temples great excavations have been made in the sides of the mountain. At A (Fig. 2), on a level with the ground, is seen a great cloister ornamented with a series of bass reliefs representing the principal gods of the Hindoo paradise. The side walls contain large, two-storied halls ornamented with superb sculptures of various divinities. Columns of squat proportions support the ceilings. A small stairway, X (Fig. 2), leads to one of these halls. Communication was formerly had with its counterpart by a stone bridge which is now broken. There still exist two (P) which lead from the floor of the central temple to the first story of the detached pavilion or _mantapa_, D, and to that of the entrance pavilion or _gopura_, C. At G we still see two sorts of obelisks ornamented with arabesques and designed for holding the fires during religious fetes. At E are seen two colossal elephants carved out of the rock. These structures, made upon a general plan of remarkable character, are truly without an equal in the entire world. We may thus see how much art feeling the architects of these remote epochs possessed, and express our wonder at the extreme taste that presided over all these marvelous subterranean structures.--_A. Tissandier, in La Nature._ * * * * * [NATURE.] TIMBER, AND SOME OF ITS DISEASES.[1] [Footnote 1: Continued from SUPPLEMENT, No, 640, p. 10222.] By H. MARSHALL WARD. IV. Before proceeding further it will be of advantage to describe another tree-killing fungus, which has long been well known to mycologists as one of the commonest of our toadstools growing from rotten stumps and decaying wood-work such as old water pipes, bridges, etc. This is _Agaricus melleus_ (Fig. 15), a tawny yellow toadstool with a ring round its stem, and its gills running down on the stem and bearing white spores, and which springs in tufts from the base of dead and dying trees during September and October. It is very common in this country, and I have often found it on beeches and other trees in Surrey, but it has been regarded as simply springing from the dead rotten wood, etc., at the base of the tree. As a matter of fact, however, this toadstool is traced to a series of dark shining strings, looking almost like the purple-black leaf stalks of the maidenhair fern, and these strings branch and meander in the wood of the tree, and in the soil, and may attain even great lengths--several feet, for instance. The interest of all this is enhanced when we know that until the last few years these long black cords were supposed to be a peculiar form of fungus, and were known as _Rhizomorpha_. They are, however, the subterranean vegetative parts (mycelium) of the agaric we are concerned with, and they can be traced without break of continuity from the base of the toadstool into the soil and tree (Fig. 16). I have several times followed these dark mycelial cords into the timber