Gentlemen who perform on stringed instruments, should be careful to provide an ample supply of strings, firsts and fourths especially; they being not only very dear, and perhaps damaged, when procurable, but at times not procurable, in any part of India, for love or money! Reeds for oboes, clarionets, bassoons, &c. are similarly circumstanced. Nor would it be superfluous for a lady to take with her several sets of wires for her piano; they being very scarce. At all events, she ought to qualify herself to tune the instrument; which may be effected in the course of a month, or six weeks, by attention to the instructions of a regular tuner, who would feel himself well satisfied under a moderate compensation. This is a point whereon I dwell rather particularly; knowing that, even in Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay, a good tuner is not always to be had; and that, in all other situations, throughout the interior scarce a professional person can be found. Besides, in a country whose climate deranges the most skilful adjustment of the wires, often in a few minutes, merely by a slight exposure to heat, or to damp, the expence attendant upon such frequent tunings, as are indispensably requisite, would speedily absorb the full value of the instrument itself; the ordinary rates being a guinea for a grand-piano, and twelve shillings for a square one. Therefore, whether considered as a convenience, or as a matter of economy, too much cannot be said in recommendation of every lady’s learning to tune her piano before she embarks. It being impossible to say how soon rough weather may be experienced after leaving port, (indeed, sometimes ships get under weigh while it is blowing very fresh,) it is usual to lash the dinner tables to the deck, placing their feet in mortices cut into small blocks, called cleats, which, being firmly nailed down, generally keep the whole sufficiently firm. It is not easy to render the chairs equally secure; but they are tolerably steadied by nailing two rows of battens on each side of the table, so as to embrace the legs of the chairs, which, in this mode of securing them, ought all to be of equal compass from front to rear. It requires, after all, some management to preserve an equilibrium when a ship rolls much; which it does chiefly in a calm, or in a gale of wind. In the former instance, the transitions of reclination from starboard to larboard, and _vice versâ_, are often very great, owing to the heavy swell which alternately raises the ship, and again sinks her into the trough made by two successive waves. However curious it may seem to persons unacquainted with sea affairs, it is nevertheless certain, that more masts are lost by rolling in a calm, than by stress of weather.