240 Mr. Wuıne’s Description and Natural History: 
exhausted Ela-Kandy will require an equal period of ycars be-- 
fore it recovers by rest its ancient vigour. Both limits are so far- 
explicable on natural principles, and appear to. be regulated by 
the exhausting and accumulating exeitabilities inherent in the 
soil, and operated upon by a continuance of the same crop. 
The successive decay and fall of the large standard. trees, de- 
stroying one of the most essential conditions of the prosperity of 
the plantation, is another and evident circumstance determining. 
the period of its duration. 
The reproduction of the same trees, to a size capable of shel- 
tering the young plants, will give the least measure for the qui- 
escent state of the ground, and this.cannot be less than twenty or 
thirty years, considering their average growth. 
The barren state of one Ela-Kandy is immediately replaced by 
the establishment of another on. a. fresh side, and with similar 
properties to the former; in the choice of which they can never 
be at a loss, from the great extent of mountain and wood in a 
state of nature; and, the same operations repeated, the customary 
routine of crops will follow. 
As the Cardamom plants spring up from scattered’ seeds dor- 
mant on the spot, or washed thither by rains from the adjacent 
parts, we do not find any regularity in their disposition, nor is 
the industry of the natives ever exerted to.correct this. Accord- 
ingly we see them variously grouped ; in- some places crowded 
and extremely luxuriant, in others thin and stunted 3 some roots 
sending forth from twenty to thirty. stems, two-thirds or three- 
fourths of which bear ; others from eight to twelve, and down to 
four or five. Hence it is difficult to-calculate the rate of produce 
in any one plant. Each stem sends forth from its thickened base 
from two to four strings or fructiferous. panicles ; from these issue 
alternately short clusters bearing from two to three ripe pods. 
Ä The. 
