A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India: Linum to Oyster

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Superintendent of Government Printing, 1891

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Page 208 - Wallich states that almost every article of household furniture intended to contain either solid or liquid food is lacquered by means of it The process consists in first coating the article with a layer of pounded calcined bones, after which the varnish is laid on thinly, either in its pure state or variously coloured. The most difficult part consists in the drying. It...
Page 213 - Absolute alcohol agitated with it was coloured greenish ; on separating the alcohol, and evaporating off the spirit, an extract was obtained which consisted of oil, from which a small residue, whitish in colour, separated on standing. The alcoholic extract was very bitter, and possessed in a marked degree the peculiar odour of the oil. The whitish residue deposited from the oil separated by alcohol, and examined microscopically, did not appear crystalline. Margosa oil after repeated agitation with...
Page 291 - If, however, later research should prove that the banana existed 'in some parts of America, before the advent of the Europeans, I should be inclined to attribute it to a chance introduction, not very ancient, the effect of some unknown communication with the islands of the Pacific or with the coast of Guinea, rather than to believe in the primitive and simultaneous existence of the species in both hemispheres. The whole of geographical botany renders the latter hypothesis improbable, I might almost...
Page 361 - In Bijapur I had found some tobacco. Never having seen the like in India, I brought some with me, and prepared a handsome pipe of jewel work. The stem, the finest to be procured at Achin, was three cubits in length, beautifully dried and coloured, both ends being adorned with jewels and enamel. I happened to come across a very handsome mouthpiece of Yaman cornelian, oval-shaped, which I set to the stem ; the whole was very handsome. There...
Page 208 - I was told, to the poverty of the soil, and partly also to the circumstance of there being none of the people in that part whose business it is to perform the process. This latter is very simple : short joints of a thin sort of bamboo, sharpened at one end like a...
Page 156 - Bai (see Cox, Myth, of the Arian Nations) the daughter of the sun is represented as persecuted by a sorceress, to escape from whom she became a golden Lotus. The king fell in love with the flower, which was then burnt by the sorceress. From its ashes grew a mango tree, and the king fell in love first with its flower, and then with its fruit ; when ripe the fruit fell to the ground, and from it emerged the daughter of the sun (Surya Bai), who was recognized by the prince as his long lost wife.
Page 551 - ... to hold large areas under cultivation ; and thus, what with resident large cultivating rayats and non-resident rayats, we do not find in the Sundarban tracts a population at all equal to what the amount of cultivation would lead us to expect. There is another thing to be noticed with reference to the dwellers in these regions, — namely, that they do not tend, as in other places, to group themselves into villages.
Page 362 - His Majesty looked at it, and ordered me to prepare and take him a pipeful. He began to smoke it, when his physician approached and forbade his doing so. But his Majesty was graciously pleased to say...
Page 229 - Menthol occurs as colorless, acicular or prismatic crystals, having a strong and pure odor of peppermint and a warm, aromatic taste, followed by a sensation of cold when air is drawn into the mouth.
Page 222 - The juice of the leaves administered internally is said to be anthclmintic, antilithic, diuretic, aud emmenagogue, and is thought to resolve cold swellings, and expel the humours which give rise to them. The bark and leaves are used internally and externally in leprosy and scrofula.

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