March 2, 1885.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 



719 



THE UNDEVELOPED RESOURCES OF UVA, 

 CEYLON. 



A writer who gives the initial "R." sends to a 

 c'omtemporaiy the very interesting paper which we give 

 below on the geology and miueialogy of Uva. Gold 

 exists in Uva as everywhere else in Ceylon, and, while 

 Mr. Campbell in his "Circular Notes" wrote of the 

 "marbles "of the country around Annradhapura, "R." 

 speaks of veins of marble in Uva capable of takiug a 

 polish equal to the product of the Carrara qnaries._ The 

 piper suppliesa new argument for railway extension :- 



I am of opinion that in this peculiarly formed basin 

 lies a considerable amount of mineral wealth, requiring 

 only roads and railway communication to open up aud 

 develop new and important industries in the island. 

 This is important, but more important still is the 

 verdict in favour of large portions of the Uva patenas 

 for agricultural purposes. 



Th re is also a notice of the fertile peroxide of 

 iron and the barren protoxide, to the predominance 

 of the latter of which salt of iron the Rev. Mr. 

 Abbey traced the barreuness of the upland patanas. 

 We may venture the prediction, that, with "the 

 circling of the suns," and the advance of science, means 

 will be discovered of ameliorating protoxide soils 

 by aeration and otherwise. Plumbago has been de- 

 scribed as ohe of the oldest formations in the earth's 

 crust, and the writer of the paper we are referring 

 to indicates a belief in the possibility of even coal 

 being discovered in the basin of Uva. 



(J EULOGY AND MINERALOGY OF THE BASIN 



OF UVA. 



HOLD, MARBLE, PLUMBAGO, AND IKON ORE. 



lEHKUUINOUS PROPERTIES OF ITS ROCKS, AND SUITABILITY 



EOR TEA, &C. 



Sib. — By parcel post I send you samples of various minerals 

 obtained in a short exploration of the hydrographical basiu 

 of Uva, aud would be very pleased to have your opinion 

 upon them. 



The gold, you will observe, is imbedded in chlorite schist, 

 where I had not expected to have met with it in such 

 large quantities. 'Whether it be prevalent, or is only 

 sparsely distributed in this class of rocks, I am unable yet 

 to say. The other minerals, with the exception of the 

 marble, I may state, are not partial deposits, but extend- 

 ed over a wide extent of district, and I am of opinion 

 that in this peculiarly formed basin lies a considerable 

 amount of mineral wealth, requiring only roads and rail- 

 way communication to open up and develop new and 

 important industries in the island. 



I regret that I have been unable, to procure in Ceylon 

 the necessary materials for polishing the marble; con- 

 sequently I have ouly been able to (operate upon it as far 

 as to enable me to perceive that it is capable of receiv- 

 ing as brilliant a polish as the famous marbles of Sicily 

 and Carrara. By leaving it. however, a few minutes in 

 a basin of water, and then holding it at a angle towards 

 the light, you will lie aide to realize the same effect it 

 would exhibit on being polished. 



The patana hills, for the most part, consist of trap rocks, 

 and, with the exception of the slopes of tlic eueircliug 

 mountain range, (the mineral formation of which is chiefly 

 gneiss, or its varieties), areas a rule barron aud too defici- 

 ent in carbon for the cultivation of vegetable products 

 geuerally, but some fine alluvial deposits are to be met 

 with on the flats, and in the valleys and hollows of this 

 wide tract of country thousands of acres which only 

 await capital and European enterprise ; and, in my opin- 

 ion, are better adapted for the cultivation of tea 

 than many kinds of jungle land, if ferruginous soil 

 he considered a desideratum. Although this property 

 may be the general charactei-istic of the soil in most ports 

 of the island, I think that the soil of the Uva basin 

 possesses it to a much greater extent than any other part 

 of the country with which I am acquainted, unless it may 

 be the subsoil around Colombo, which chiefly consists of 

 laterite, i.i ., decomposed trap, with red oxide of iron, 

 the same which constitutes the soil of fhe trap rocks ut Uva, 



There are, however, two kinds of oxides of iron fouud 

 in almost all soils, viz., the protoxide and peroxide, and 

 I have not been able to ascertain, from analyses which 

 have hitherto been made of Ceylon soils the relative pro- 

 portion of each of these two salts of iron. But this is a 

 very important matter for the tea planter to know, as 

 soils which contain the protoxide, even to a very small 

 extent, soon become barren, unless heavily manured. In 

 soils formed from the decomposition of syenite and horn- 

 ilendic gneiss, protoxide of iron may be found to pre- 

 dominate, some kinds of hornblende containing as much 

 as 22 per cent of it, along with salts of manganese. 



On examining the gneiss of the Totapela. Nuwara Eliya, 

 Kandapola, and Udapussellawa ranges downwards to the 

 centre of the Uva basin this series of rocks is found to 

 vary from a compact granitic and highly-crystalline nature 

 to laminated hornblende and chlorite schists, graduating 

 into fine white sandstone of the consistency of a New- 

 castle grindstone, then into loose unindurated sandstone. 

 These form the soil of a certain portion of the undulatiug 

 hills, whilst a great many are formed entirely of purely 

 subaqueous deposits, varying from 50 ft. to 100 ft. in depth. 

 During the late unprecedented rains some enormous land- 

 slips have occurred in this district, carrying away, in one 

 instance, the whole side of a hill, about 500 feet in height, 

 revealing at once the formations of untold ages. Here 

 I have discovered a set of perfectly stratified sandstone 

 rocks, from 80 feet to 100 feet in thickness, and about 

 200 hundred feet beneath the surface of the adjoining 

 hills, imbedding large round water-worn boulders 1 cwt. 

 to over a ton in weight. They appear to be a red sand- 

 stone formation, but in the absence of a single fossil it is 

 impossible for me to say to what series they may belong. 

 It has been asserted by some writers on the geology 

 of Ceylon that none of the stratified formations, posterior 

 to gneiss, had ever been found, and that probably they 

 never would. If this were the case, we should be obliged 

 to suppose that during the periods of the accumulation 

 of those formations in other parts of the globe, this island 

 must either have been dry land or that it was not in 

 existence, or existing only beneath the waves. From the 

 very fact, however, of the existence of plumbago aloue, such 

 could not have been the case, and we arc thus led to 

 assume that Ceylon, as an island or part of a continent, 

 must have been more than once submerged and upheaved, 

 and, if plumbago had at one time existed as coal, as Sir 

 Charles Lyell imagines, the last general upheaval must 

 have taken place subsequent to the carboniferous period. 

 It is also a remarkable coincidence that whatever may 

 be the circumstances under which plumbago is met with 

 in other parts of the island, in Uva it is found amongst 

 the detritus of decomposed trap rock. It was also in the 

 neighbourhood of these igneous rocks, where I met with 

 the marble and clay iron-stone. 



"With the exception of gold, all those minerals an-, in 

 England, associated with a coal field, and t am of opinion 

 that if coal be found to exist in Ceylou, it will, most 

 likely, be met with in the hollows and basins of the trap 

 hills of Uva. — K. — "Times of Ceylou." 



PLANTERS' ASSOCIATION OF CEYLON. 



The following are extrao'a from the 3lst annual 

 report for 1S34-S.5 of the Ceylon Planters' Association 

 read at the anuua] meeting on 17th February 1885: — 



Acir Products. — Your Committee congratulate you on 

 the largely increased exports of all new products. 



1'ea. — The congratulations which your Committee was able 

 to offer you last year on the great progress made in tho 

 cultivation of this product can he repeated this year with 

 increased force. Your Committee recognize the fact that 

 it is to tea mainly that the planting community and the 

 colony must look for a return of general prosperity, and 

 there are already signs that a measure of that pro- 

 sperity is not far distant. During the past year 

 in almost every planting district the greatest 

 activity has been displayed in planting up both 

 old and new land with tea, and in the more advanced 

 districts large factories aud the most improved machinery 

 have been erected. Individual estates and clearings have 

 yielded unprecedented crops, and, although these pheuom- 

 iual yields arc no guide lu the probable average out- 



