[In
a private note to a friend, the writer adds :—" We had to clear out way
along our old bridle-path from Boltumbe and in doing this came on
several snakes. I send you one whole, which the natives, as usual, say
is deadly ; * it certainly looks a dangerous beast to me, and the head
of a big reptile that could not be got into the bottle, t The snake the
head belonged to was basking in the sunshine on a rock in the middle of
the path. I have made drawings of the gem diggers, huts, and of the
hills where hundreds of gem diggers are now in active operation. Could
you put me in the way of sending them to one of the illustrated papers?
I think .they are the kind of things that such papers would reproduce.
I send with this a short account of what I saw and heard during my
trip. We did not find any people at work on our land, but we put up in
a very good hut they had built, and saw plenty more huts and no end ef
gem-pits." We shall be glad to forward the sketches and the above
description to the editor of the Graphic, who, we doubt not, will be very ready to make use of them.—Kd.]
SPECIMENS OF GOLD-BEARING QUARTZ FROM VICTORIA AND THE GOLD PROSPECTS IN CEYLON.
Apart
from the fact that prospecting for gold is going on in our island the
Ceylon Commissioner to the Melbourne Exhibition would have considered
it part of his duty to have obtained for the colony he represented
representative specimens of gold-bearing quartz and pyrites. As mere
geological and mineral-ogical illustrations, as indications of the
prevailing characters and constituents of gold-bearing strata, the
collection would be interesting to scientific men. But the possibility
of a paying gold-field occurring in Ceylon adds a fresh interest to the
contents of the little box, which the Commissioner owed to the courtesy
of Mr. Barnard, F. G. s., Registrar of the Ballarat School of Mines, a
most valuable institution, where, for very moderate fees, pupils,
including working miners, are taught the whole circle of the sciences,
ranging from Mathematics, Drawing and Surveying, Geology and Botany,
Magnetism and Telegraphy (female pupils taught) down to Chemistry,
Engine-driving, and under-ground mining. As the latter pursuit involves
constant liability to accident, the pupils who are qualifying
themselves for taking charge of shafts and mines receive a thorough and
practical training, not only in Materia Medica and Physiology, but in
the treatment of wounds and fractures. We are not likely to forget our
night visit to the School at Ballarat, when the enthusiastic surgical
lecturer, Dr. Ussher, imprisoned us in his class-room until we had seen
a tall, strong young fellow bound and bandaged and pinioned, so that he
resembled a mummy ! No language of ours can be too strong to express
the sense we feel of the advantages enjoyed by the youth of Victoria,
in being able, after common school age (15) to receive at slight
expense a very high scientific and practical training at either the
Mining School at Ballarat or the sister institution at Sandhurst. The
life *nd soul of the latter is Mr. Alex. Bayne, to whom, as to Mr.
Barnard, and also Mr. Cosmo Newberry of the Melbourne Technological
Museum, the Ceylon
* This is one of the pit vipers, the kunakatuwa and polon-telissa of the Sinhalese, the Hypnale nepa, an
oily-looking, flat-headed, marbled snake, very common from the coast up
to 6,000 feet elevation. It| has been erroneously figured in Davy's
History of Ceylon as the " karawala," which is the Bungarus Geyloiiensis.
t The head indicates its close affinity to Aspidura Copii, so
rare in 1864. when Giinther's work on the Reptiles of British India was
published, that only one specimen was known, and this was conjectured
to be from Ceylon. It has since been found in Dikoya, and one specimen
exists in the Colombo Museum. The head sent proves that it is an
aberrant form or new species of Aspidura. Could our friend try and
secure an entire specimen of this snake?—W, F.
