gradually or sinking into a growth of underwood, but stopping abruptly and at once, the tallest trees forming a fence around the avoided spot, as if they enclosed an area of solid stone. These sunny expanses vary in width from a few yards to many thousands of acres; in the lower ranges of the hills they are covered with tall lemon-grass (Andropogon schoenanthus), whose oppressive perfume and coarse texture, when full grown, render it distasteful to cattle, which will only crop the delicate braird that springs after the surface has been annually burnt by the Kandyans. Two stunted trees, alone, are seen to thrive in these extraordinary prairies, Careya arborea, and Emblica officinalis, and these only below an altitude of 4000 feet; above this, the lemongrass is superseded by harder and more wiry species; but the earth is still the same, a mixture of decomposed quartz largely impregnated with oxide of iron, but wanting the phosphates and other salts which are essential to highly organised vegetation. The extent of the patena land is enormous in Ceylon, amounting to millions of acres; and it is to be hoped that the complaints which have hitherto been made by the experimental cultivators of coffee in the Kandyan provinces may hereafter prove exaggerated, and that much that has been attributed to the poverty of the soil may eventually be traced to deficiency of skill on the part of the early planters.

The natives in the same lofty localities find no deficient returns in the crops of rice, which they raise in the ravines and hollows, into which the earth from above has been washed by the periodical rains; but the cultivation of rice is so entirely so entirely dependent on the

1 HUMBOLDT is disposed to ascribe the absence of trees in the vast grassy plains of South America, to "the destructive custom of setting fire to the woods, when the natives want to convert the soil into pasture: when during the lapse of centuries grasses and plants have covered the surface

with a carpet, the seeds of trees can no longer germinate and fix themselves in the earth, although birds and winds carry them continually from the distant forests into the Savannahs."-Narrative, vol. i. ch. vi. p. 242.

presence of water, that no inference can be fairly drawn as to the quality of the soil from the abundance of its harvest.

The fields on which rice is grown in these mountains form one of the most picturesque and beautiful objects in the country of the Kandyans. Selecting an angular recess where two hills converge, they construct a series of terraces, raised stage above stage, and retiring as they ascend along the slope of the acclivity, up which they are carried as high as the soil extends. Each terrace is furnished with a low ledge in front, behind which the requisite depth of water is retained during the germination of the seed, and what is superfluous is permitted to trickle down to the one below it. In order to carry on this peculiar cultivation the streams are led along the level of the hills, often from a distance of many miles, with a skill and perseverance for which the natives of these mountains have attained a great

renown.

In the lowlands to the south, the soil partakes of the character of the hills from whose detritus it is to a great extent formed. In it rice is the chief article produced, and for its cultivation the disintegrated laterite (cabook), when thoroughly irrigated, is sufficiently adapted. The seed time in the southern section of the island is dependent on the arrival of the rains in November and May, and hence the mountains and the maritime districts at their base enjoy two harvests in each year-the Maha, which is sown about July and August, and reaped in December and January, and the Yalla, which is sown in spring, and reaped from the 15th of July to the 20th September. But owing to the different description of seed sown in particular localities, and the extent to which they are

1 The conversion of the land into these hanging farms is known in Cey

rowed from the Kandyan vernacular, in which the word "assuedamé" imlon as "assuedamizing," a term bor-plies the process above described.

respectively affected by the rains, the times of sowing and harvest vary considerably on different sides of the island.1

In the north, where the influence of the monsoons is felt with less force and regularity, and where, to counteract their uncertainty, the rain is collected in reservoirs, a wider discretion is left to the husbandman in the choice of season for his operations.2 Two crops of grain, however, are the utmost that is taken from the land, and in many instances only one. The soil near the coast is light and sandy, but in the great central districts of Neuera-kalawa and the Wanny, there is found in the midst of the forests a dark vegetable mould, in which in former times rice was abundantly grown by the aid of those prodigious artificial works for irrigation which still form one of the wonders of the island. Many of the tanks, though partially in ruins, cover an area from ten to fifteen miles in circumference. They are now generally broken and decayed; the waters which would fertilise a province are allowed to waste themselves in the sands, and hundreds of square miles capable of furnishing food for all the inhabitants of Ceylon are abandoned to solitude and malaria, whilst rice for the support of the non-agricultural population is annually imported from the opposite coast of India.

Talawas. In these districts of the lowlands, especially on the eastern coast of the island, and in the country watered by the Mahawelli-ganga and the other great rivers which flow towards the Bay of Bengal and the magnificent estuary of Trincomalie, there are open glades which diversify the forest scenery somewhat

The reaping of other descriptions | of grain besides rice occurs at various periods of the year according to the focality.

2 This peculiarity of the north of Ceylon was noticed by the Chinese traveller FA HIAN, who visited the

island in the fourth century, and says of the country around Anarajapoora : "L'ensemencement des champs est suivant la volonté des gens; il n'y a point de temps pour cela."-Foe Kouě Ki, p. 332.

resembling the grassy patenas in the hills, but differing from them in the character of their soil and vegetation. These park-like meadows, or, as the natives call them, "talawas," vary in extent from one to a thousand acres. They are belted by the surrounding woods, and studded with groups of timber and sometimes with single trees of majestic dimensions. Through these pastures the deer troop in herds within gunshot, bounding into the nearest cover when disturbed.

Lower still and immediately adjoining the sea-coast, the broken forest gives place to brushwood, with here and there an assemblage of dwarf shrubs; but as far as the eye can reach, there is one vast level of impenetrable jungle, broken only by the long sweep of salt marshes which form lakes in the rainy season, but are dry between the monsoons, and crusted with crystals that glitter like snow in the sunshine.

On the western side of the island the rivers have formed broad alluvial plains, in which the Dutch attempted to grow sugar. The experiment has been often resumed since; but even here the soil is so defective, that the cost of artificially enriching it has hitherto been a serious obstruction to success commercially, although in one or two instances, plantations on a small scale have succeeded to a certain extent.

METALS. The plutonic rocks of Ceylon are but slightly metalliferous, and hitherto their veins and deposits have been but imperfectly examined. The first successful survey attempted by the government was undertaken during the administration of Viscount Torrington, who, in 1847, commissioned Dr. Gygax to proceed to the hill district south of Adam's Peak, and furnish a report on its products. His investigations extended from Ratnapoora, in a south-eastward direction, to the mountains which overhang Bintenne, but the results obtained did not greatly enlarge the knowledge previously possessed. He established the exist

ence of tin in the alluvium along the base of the mountains to the eastward towards Edelgashena; but so circumstanced, owing to the flow of the Walleway river, that, without lowering its level, the metal could not be extracted with advantage. The position in which it occurs is similar to that in which tin ore presents itself in Saxony; and along with it, the natives, when searching for gems, discover garnets, corundum, white topazes, zircon, and tourmaline.

Gold is found in minute particles at Gettyhedra, and in the beds of the Maha Oya and other rivers flowing towards the west.1 But the quantity hitherto discovered has been too trivial to reward the search. The early inhabitants of the island were not ignorant of its presence; but its occurrence on a memorable occasion, as well as that of silver and copper, is recorded in the Mahawanso a miraculous manifestation, which signalised the founding of one of the most renowned shrines at the ancient capital.2

as

Nickel and cobalt appear in small quantities in Saffragam, and the latter, together with rutile (an oxide of titanium) and wolfram, might find a market in China. for the colouring of porcelain.3 Tellurium, another rare and valuable metal, hitherto found only in Transylvania and the Ural, has likewise been discovered in these

1 Ruanwellé, a fort about forty miles distant from Colombo, derives its name from the sands of the river which flows below it,-rang-welle, "golden sand." "Rang-galla," in the central province, is referable to the same root--the rock of gold.

2 Mahawanso, ch. xxiii. p. 166, 167.

3 The Asiatic Annual Register for 1799 contains the following:“Extract from a letter from Colombo,

dated 26th Oct. 1798.

"A discovery has been lately made here of a very rich mine of quicksilver,

about six miles from this place. The appearances are very promising, for a handful of the earth on the surface will, by being washed, produce the value of a rupee. A guard is set over it, and accounts sent express to the Madras Government.". -P. 53. See also PERCEVAL'S Ceylon, p. 539.

JOINVILLE, in a MS. essay on The Geology of Ceylon, now in the library of the East India Company, says that near Trincomalie there is "un sable noir, composé de détriments de trappe et de cristaux de fer, dans lequel on trouve par le lavage beaucoup de | mercure.”