BEANPOT HOCKEY TOURNAMENT

Between 1744 and 1751, Carolus Linnaeus - one of every botanist's heroes, I would think - corresponded with Johan Georg Gmelin (1709-1755), a colleague botanist and entomologist. As we know, one of their topics was classsification of the natural world. In 1747, Linnaeus writes that the Lutheran church is giving him a very hard time in this respect. In his scheme of classification he had included man among the simians (the higher primates), seeing no difference betwen them. This is one of the many steps in the history of biology that led to the ideas of Wallace - the explorer who wrote of his adventures and collecting in The Malay Archipelago in which he waxes eloquent and extensively on Sulawesi - and Darwin on the development of species.
Linnaeus named White Teak after his friend. It's considered a member of the Verbenaceae, but because it's a tree it also has the epithet 'arborea'. White Teak had been described by Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede van Draakenstein in his famous book on the plants of India in the seventeenth century as occuring on the Malabar Coast, named there 'Cumbulu'. Later William Roxburgh (1751-1815), first a surgeon at Madras, India, and then recognised for his avocation as a botanist by the British colonial government, described it more precisely.
Gmelina's wood is very hard. According to the 'Security Man' at the Bili Bili dam in the Jene Berang, the local population fashions masks from it. The leaves are squeezed to staunch blood from cuts.
The cultivation of these trees in large forestry projects is an attempt to alleviate the poverty of the people of northern South Sulawesi. The PT Panca Usaha Palopo Plywood a few years ago distributed thousands of imported seedlings of Gmelina to the farmers of Palopo and Kabupaten Luwu (about 350 kms north of Makassar). In five or six years time they would be ready for harvesting, in particular for the production of plywood; and it is expected that this will have a positive effect on the development of the standard of living of that area.
The development of the great Bili Bili reservoir, completed in 1999, proves to be a mixed blessing (a terrible mudslide in 2004; but it is also a greatly needed source of water for the ever-expanding city of Makassar). It will be interesting to see how the cultivation of Gmelina works out...

"The oldest living city in the world".

This was shot on Shivala ghat along river Ganga in Varanasi (Benaras).
Those kids are playing cricket which is the unofficial national sport of India.
Cricket's development has been closely tied up with the history of the country, mirroring many of the political and cultural developments around issues such as race, caste, religion and nationality.
Though cricket is indubitably the most popular sport in India, it is not the nation's national sport.
Cricket, like field hockey, was first introduced to India by the British.
The earliest recorded match was played in 1721 by British sailors on shore leave.
With the expansion of British rule throughout the subcontinent, the British took the game with them wherever they went.
However, the early history of the game was focused largely on the large cities, particularly Bombay (now Mumbai).