with great difficulty that the specimens of these fabrics sent to the
Great Exhibition of 1851, were procured. The kind of cotton (which is
very short in the staple) employed, is now hardly grown, and scarcely
a loom exists which is fit for the finest fabrics. The jewellers
still excel in gold and silver filagree.

Pine-apples, plantains, mangos, and oranges, abound in the Dacca
market, betokening a better climate for tropical fruits than that of
Western Bengal; and we also saw the fruit of _Euryale ferox,_* [An
Indian water-lily with a small red flower, covered everywhere with
prickles, and so closely allied to _Victoria regia_ as to be scarcely
generically distinguishable from it. It grows in the eastern
Sunderbunds, and also in Kashmir. The discoverer of Victoria called
the latter "_Euryale Amazonica._" These interestiug plants are
growing side by side in the new Victoria house at Kew. The Chinese
species has been erroneously considered different from the Indian
one.] which is round, soft, pulpy, and the size of a small orange; it
contains from eight to fifteen round black seeds as large as peas,
which are full of flour, and are eaten roasted in India and China, in
which latter country the plant is said to have been in cultivation
for upwards of 3000 years.

The native vegetation is very similar to that of the Hoogly, except
that the white rose is frequent here. The fact of a plant of this
genus being as common on the plains of Bengal as a dog-rose is in
England, and associated with cocoa-nuts, palms, mangos, plantains,
and banyans, has never yet attracted the attention of botanists,
though the species was described by Roxburgh. As a geographical fact
it is of great importance, for the rose is usually considered a
northern genus, and no kind but this inhabits a damp hot tropical