not for the purpose of making rope, to which they never apply it, but to make an intoxicating preparation called bang, which they smoke in pipes along with tobacco. In other parts of India a drink is prepared by bruising the blossoms, young leaves, and tender parts of the stalk. Small plantations of tobacco, which the natives call tambaku, are met with in every part of the country. The leaves are cut whilst green into fine shreds, and afterwards dried in the sun. The species is the same as the Virginian, and, were the quantity increased and people more expert in the method of curing it, a manufacture and trade of considerable importance might be established. PULAS TWINE. The kaluwi is a species of urtica or nettle of which excellent twine called pulas is made. It grows to the height of about four feet, has a stem imperfectly ligneous, without branches. When cut down, dried, and beaten, the rind is stripped off and then twisted as we do the hemp. It affords me great satisfaction to learn that the manufacture of rope from this useful plant has lately attracted the attention of the Company's Government, and that a considerable nursery of the kaluwi has been established in the Botanic Garden at Calcutta, under the zealous and active management of Dr. Roxburgh, who expresses his opinion that so soon as a method shall be discovered of removing a viscid matter found to adhere to the fibres the kaluwi hemp, or pulas, will supersede every other material. The bagu-tree (Gnetum gnemon, L.) abounds on the southern coast of the island, where its bark is beaten, like hemp, and the twine manufactured from it is employed in the construction of large fishing nets. The young leaves of the tree are dressed in curries. In the island of Nias they make a twine of the baru-tree (Hibiscus tiliaceus), which is afterwards woven into a coarse cloth for bags. From the pisang (musa) a kind of sewing-thread is procured by stripping filaments from the midribs of the leaves, as well as from the stem. In some places this thread is worked in the loom. The kratau, a dwarf species of mulberry (morus, foliis profunde incisis) is planted for the food of the silkworms, which they rear, but not to any great extent, and the raw silk produced from them seems of but an indifferent quality. The samples I have seen were white instead of yellow, in large, flat cakes, which would require much trouble to wind off, and the filaments appeared coarse; but this may be partly occasioned by the method of loosening them from the bags, which is by steeping them in hot water. Jarak (ricinus and Palma christi), from whence the castor oil is extracted, grows wild in abundance: especially near the sea-shore. Bijin (Sesamum indicum) is sown extensively in the interior districts for the oil it produces, which is there used for burning in place of the coconut-oil so common near the coast. ELASTIC GUM.