served that the wings of the young ones began to appear. The head still retained the dark red colour, but the black lines on the body had become much fainter. Again on the 31st, large flights continued to pass, driven by the wind to the southward; of course very few alighted. They caused little mischief within our view. The wings of the young tribe (the whole four being now formed) were about one-eighth of an inch in length. After this time I made no particular observations on their progress, being otherwise engaged, but they disappeared in a few days. BIOGRAPHY. BIOGRAPHY. VIZIER ALLY. (From the Asiatic Journal.) sidering his education, which instilled the most despotic ideas. He was fond of lavishing his I confinement, at Fort William, horses, elephants, European guns, N May last (1817,) died, in treasures on gardens, palaces, Calcutta, the Vizier Ally. Those extraordinary vicissitudes of fortune which are so often the result of a turbulent and restless disposition, were never more fully exemplified than in the fate of this individual, whose early career of life commenced amidst all the gorgeous splendor of Eastern magnifi lustres, and mirrors. He expended every year about 200,000l. in English manufactures. This nabob had more than an hundred gardens, 20 palaces, 1,200 elephants, 3,000 fine saddle horses, 1,500 double barrel guns, seventeen hundred superb lustres, thirty thousand shades, of various forms and colours; several hundred large mirrors, girandoles, and clocks; some of the latter were very curious, richly set with jewels, having figures in continual movement, and playing tunes every hour; two of these clocks cost him thirty thousand pounds. Without taste or judgment, he was extremely solicitous to possess all that was elegant and rare; he had instruments and machines of every art and science, but he knew none; and his museum was so ridiculously disposed, that a wooden cuckoo clock was placed close to a superb time-piece which cost the price At thirteen his marriage took place. To give an idea of the splendor which attached to his youth, and from which he subsequently fell, the following account of his nuptials is extracted from Forbes' "Oriental Memoirs." of a diadem; and a valuable his adopted son still increasing, landscape of Claude Lorraine he lavished upon him every suspended near a board painted mark of regard. with ducks and drakes. His haram contained above 500 of the greatest beauties of India, immured in high walls which they were never to leave, except on their biers. He had an immense number of domestic servants, and a very large army besides, being fully protected from hostile invasion by the company's subsidiary forces, for which he paid five hundred thousand pounds per annum. His jewels amounted to about eight millions sterling. Amidst this precious treasure, he might be seen for several hours every day, handling them as a child does his toys.' Asuf had no legitimate children, and it was doubted whether he had any natural ones. He was in the habit, whenever he saw a pregnant woman, whose appearance struck his fancy, to invite her to the palace to lie-in; and several women of this description were delivered there, and among the number was the mother of Vizier Ally. Several children so delivered were brought up and educated in the palace. The sprightliness of Vizier Ally, while yet an infant, so entirely engrossed the affections of the old nabob, that he determined to adopt him. In conformity with this resolution, the youth received an education suitable to a prince who was destined to succeed to the musnud. He is said, however, to have developed at this period, a propensity to delight in the sufferings of the brute creation. The affection of the old nabob towards "The wedding of Vizier Ally was celebrated at Lucknow, in 1795, and was one of the most magnificent in modern times. The nabob had his tents pitched on the plains, near the city of Lucknow; among the number were two remarkably large, made of strong cotton cloth, lined with the finest English broad cloth, cut in stripes of different colours, with cords of silk and cotton. These two tents cost five lacks of rupees, or above fifty thousand pounds sterling; they were each 120 feet long, 60 broad, and the poles about 60 feet high; the walls of the tents were ten feet high; part of them were cut into lattice-work for the women of the nabob's seraglio, and those of the principal nobility, to see through. His highness was covered with jewels, to the amount at least, of two millions sterling. From thence we removed to the shumeena, which was illuminated by two hundred elegant girandoles from Europe, as many glass shades with wax candles, and several hundred flambeaux; the glare and reflection was dazzling and offensive to the sight. When seated under this extensive canopy, above a hundred dancing girls, richly dressed, went through their elegant, but rather lascivious dances It is evident that the author of that essay (M. Macdonald), or the person from whom he derived his information (Lieut. Lewis), considered the plant in question to be a laurel; as the camphor tree of Japan is described to be. But, as neither of those gentlemen seems to have been conversant with botany, it continued to be far from improbable that the botanical character of the plant might have been mistaken by them; and that it was referred by the author of the essay cited, to the genus Laurus, or to the class and order to which that genus belongs, upon no other foundation but a preconceived notion grounded upon the existing information concerning the camphor tree of Japan. It was the less unlikely, that the two plants might belong to different genera, or even to different orders, as camphor is well known to be a production of a great variety of plants, though in a less pure state, and not so readily and abundantly afforded; and, as it was observed by Kampfer, in speaking of the Laurus camphorifera and of the extraction of camphor from its wood and roots with the aid of heat, that "natural camphor in substance and of greatest value is furnished by a tree on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, which is not of the Laurus genus.' "" "Cam phoram naturalem et cristallinam perquam pretiosam ac raram impertitur arbor in Sumatra et Borneo insulis. Sed hæc arbor ex Daphineo sanguine non est."+ *Kampf. Amen. p. 770. Considering then the specific character of the camphor tree of Sumatra to be unsettled, and the generic character dubious, botanists in India have been long solicitous of more correct and definite information on this subject, and Doctor Roxburgh, in particular, was at great pains to procure living plants with specimens of the fructification. His endeavours had not been successful at the time of his quitting India; but he had received a rough sketch of the fruit and leaf, from the appearance of which he was led to name the plant Shorea camphorifera; and his conjecture, as will be shown, was not very remote from the truth. It has been my fortune, in his absence, to receive from Doctor Roxburgh's correspondent at Tapanooly (Mr. Prince, the resident at that station), a number of the seeds in very perfect condition, and a few living plants. The latter, I am sorry to say, did not outlive the subsequent cold season; but the examination of the seed enables me to determine the genus of the plant with entire confidence. It undoubtedly belongs to the Dryobalanops of the younger Gærtner; and is not unlikely to be the identical species which furnished the specimen inspected by him, and which he named Dryobalanops aromatica. Gærtner's information, indeed, states the specimen to have been received from Ceylon, with an intimation that the bark of the tree is the genuine and best cinnamon. But, as there is every reason to be satisfied, that cinnamon is exclusively produced produced by a species of the laurel, the information which accompanied the specimen in question may have been in every part inaccurate. As this point, however, is uncertain, and the specific characters of Gartner's species are unknown, or at least unpublished, it is for the present necessary to allot a distinct name to the camphor tree of Sumatra. I propose therefore to name it Dryobalanops camphora, until its identity with D. aromatica be esta blished. The description which I shall offer of it is unavoidably imperfect, as the flower has not yet been seen by a botanist. But the generic character is so strongly pronounced in the fruit, that there can be no doubt of its place in the same natural order with the Shorea, the Dipterocarpus, and Vateria, to which the Hopea of Doctor Roxburgh is to be added; and most probably in the same class and order in the Linnean artificial arrangement, viz. Polyandria monogynia. This section of Juissieu's natural order of Guttifera comprises trees remarkáble for their aromatic and resinous productions. Shorea robusta and Zambuga, and perhaps other species of the genus, yield in great abundance the resin called by the Hindustánis Dhuna, and by the English in India Dammer, which is very generally used as a substitute for pitch for marine purposes. The natives of India also employ it in their temples in the manner of incense. Dipterocorpus costatus, turbinatus, incanus, alatus, and probably other species of the genus, afford the several : sorts of balsam called by the natives of India Garjan; by the Singhalese, Dhornatel; and by the English, Wood Oil. Vateria Indica produces the resin in India called Copal, as very nearly approaching the true resin of that name. The best specimens are employed as ornaments, under the denomination of amber (Kahroba) to which it bears exterior resemblance, in its recent and fluid state it is used as a varnish in the south of India, (Buchanan's Mysore, 2, p. 476), and dissolved by heat in closed vessels is employed for the same purpose in other parts of India. Another plant of the same genus, Vateria lancéæ-folia, affords a resin, from which, as from other resins, the Indians prepare one of the materials of their religious oblations. |