316 MR. H. H. W. PEARSON ON THE 
What would be the effect of constantly recurring fires in such 
a forest as this? The grasses would be consumed by each 
successive fire, their young fresh growths appearing again during 
each rainy season. In this way the soil would be laid bare, and 
n this condition would receive the heavy rains of the N.E. 
monsoon, from the full force of which the crowns of the scattered 
trees would be no adequate protection. Thus, annually, the 
soil would become poorer by the carrying away in solution of 
its more soluble constituents, and shallower * by the mechanical 
erosion to which it would be subjected. Meanwhile the trees 
would suffer from the effects of successive fires, and all but the 
more resistant and hard-wooded species would, in time, become 
exterminated. As the vegetation became more sparse the action 
of rain on the soil would be greater, and as the soil decreased 
in depth and deteriorated in quality, only the more wiry and 
coarser grasses, and comparatively few of the hardier trees, would 
survive. Under these conditions, and with a sufficient lapse of 
time, it is easy to see how an area covered with a savannah- 
forest could be transformed to something identical with the 
patanas of to-day. 
Abbay t states that it is impossible that the Uva patanas can 
have resulted from the action of recurrent fires on the forest, 
and he supports his view by three considerations, viz. :— 
(1) That in other cases in Ceylon where forest has been 
destroyed by fire, it has been replaced by “ Chena,” i. e. 
low bushy scrub, and not by a grussy formation such as 
occurs on the patanas. 
(2) That these grass-lands of Uva are poor and unproductive, 
and therefore the last pieces of ground whieh one would 
expect a native in search of pasture to select. 
(3) That, if the patanas had really resulted from artificial 
causes, as 1s here maintained, there would be some tradi- 
tional record of such a striking change having come over 
the face of the country. . 
It is undoubtedly true that the firing of the low-country 
* A similar case of soil-denudation, owing to the action of heavy rains on 
a surface deprived of its natural covering by fire, has occurred on the slopes of 
the Siwalik Hills in N. India: v. Hess, “ Der Forstschutz," transl. by Fisher 
in Schlich’s * Manual of Forestry, London, 1895, vol. iv. p. 541. 
T Loc. cit. p. 399. 
