166 SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 
NOTES CONCERNING THE OCCURRENCE OF SMALL 
DESERT TRACTS IN THE NORTH-WEST 
OF CEYLON. 
By E, J. WAYLAND. 
(With five plates and a map.) 
ROBABLY no road in Ceylon is so little known as that 
which runs from Puttalam to Mannar. It can hardly 
be traversed without considerable difficulty, for in point of 
fact it is not aroad but a track. Not always easy to determine, 
and varying considerably from point to point, it affords the 
traveller an interesting, if somewhat tiresome, journey. It 
passes through dense forest, thorny scrub, and park lands ; 
over miles of parched red earth and sun-baked plains, over the 
dry beds of rivers and under the cool surface of lakes and 
permanent water-courses ; through the mire and slush of reed- 
choked swamp, and in one place, at least, across a desert. 
This remarkable and unlooked for desert tract lies about half 
a mile to the south of the Moderagam-aar (the river which 
forms the northern boundary of the North-Western Province). 
There are, to my knowledge, two other desert-like areas within 
easy reach of Marichchukkaddi; the one which I propose to call 
(b) (reserving (a) for the first mentioned) is some four or five 
miles to the east of the village, and the other (c) immediately 
south of the Kall-aar (Northern Province). Some indications 
of a fourth are to be found about a quarter of a mile to 
the north of the same river. They share the peculiarity of 
being surrounded by jungle, which ends sharply at their 
edges; much as the up-country forests abut against the 
patnas. Not one of them is far from a water-course, but they 
are not in themselves stream beds. They are totally unlike 
the broad sandy channels of the rivers which dry up completely 
