is called a hashash, and is to be found in every hut; thus all the agricultural utensils of a Kordofanese peasant cost twenty paras (little more than three-halfpence). After the fall of the first rain the grass is raked up in the fields, and preparations are made for sowing, an occupation requiring the services of two persons only; the one walks before the other, making, at about every two paces, a hole with the hashash in the sandy soil, in which his companion each time places a few seeds, and then treads down the hole with his right foot. This operation is performed with extraordinary rapidity. The ensuing rain imparts to the ground the necessary moisture, and as soon as the rainy season terminates the fruit ripens. The chief condition for a successful harvest is, that an over abundance of rain do not injure the seed, and on this account the field should be situated on a declivity, that the water may run off; but if too little rain fall, a failure is likewise the result. With the straw the natives build their tukkoli; the remainder is consumed as food by the cattle. The grain is thrashed out in the field, laden upon camels or oxen, and brought into the village, where it is shot into pits lined with straw mats, and subsequently covered over with sand. The latter proceeding is chiefly for the purpose of securing the produce from the over-abundant vermin, and frequently also from the rapacity of the government. Besides this species of grain a small quantity of douhra may be met with, and I doubt very much whether a species of corn of the temperate zone might be cultivated with more profit or with the same facility as the dockn. It happens, however, in some years that the necessary quantity is not grown, and then whole villages are frequently necessitated to betake themselves to the woods, and live upon the egelit,[58] a fruit of the size of a plum, of a yellowish colour, and pulpy consistence, which has not an unpleasant flavour. Kordofan is altogether blest with many useful trees notwithstanding its poverty in other respects, and an addition might be made to their number with very little artificial aid, were the inhabitants not too lazy and too stolid to engage with energy in any undertaking, whilst the government, on the other hand, only directs its attention to those objects which return an immediate profit.