Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/413

1837.] fact in magnetism, that two magnets having a free motion will attract when different poles are directed towards each other, and repel when the adjacent poles are of the same name, seems to explain the phenomena.

The cultivation of pán .—The agricultural productions which are in general use among the people of the country having been already incidentally mentioned, I here pass over to others less frequently cultivated; and will now give some account of the cultivation of pán.

This leaf which is in very general use among all classes of Hindus, and is chewed by them with supari, is the produce of a creeping plant, which has been denominated a vine. It has a light-green colour and sub-astringent taste, having a degree of pungency which at first excites an increased flow of saliva, but which diminishes, by repetition, the secretions of the mouth, and parches the tongue and fauces.

In using it, a few bruised pieces of the areca-nut, with two or three grains of ilachi, and a small proportion of carbonate of lime, are wrapped up in one or more leaves of the plant. The whole is then chewed by the natives of India, from the same bad influence of example which has given tobacco a similar station among the inhabitants of Europe.

In the cultivation of pán, both wind and sun are carefully excluded, and a cool shade is studiously preserved for the rising plant. With this view an acre or more of ground is inclosed by a double hedge of thuhar, or closely-bound twigs; and the natural black soil of the place has its capacity for retaining moisture increased, by the addition of a considerable quantity of red argillaceous earth. This fact is practically well known to the pán cultivator, who is generally of a Hindu cast named Tirghul, and is supposed to have originally emigrated to this part of the Dekkan from the Carnatic.

The ground being now ploughed, and manured with horse-dung, if procurable, is smoothed by the harrow; and is then considered to have undergone sufficient preparation for receiving seeds of the sheoga, hutga, and neemb trees, which grow up as the future supporters to the plant, and intended to serve after the manner of hop-sticks in England. These seeds are usually sown, at the end of the monsoon, in parallel rows of two feet wide; but sometimes a greater distance is left when the garden ground has not been divided into beds,