Mr. E. L. Layard's Rambles in Ceylon. 311 



C and I parted this morning ; he to inspect his work, I to return 

 home : he however saw me safe over the river, which was indeed a 

 difficult matter. How we blundered blindly through it the first time 

 I have no conception. After passing this, near the fifth mile there 

 is a very bad place ; in fact, the road passes over a rock, on which 

 the iron shoes of my poor horse were hke so many skates, and we had 

 to hold him up by main force. Getting safely over this, we drove 

 down what appeared the half-dry bed of a river rather than a road, 

 full of loose stones and with a stream of water down the centre : at 

 one place was a deep hole filled with mud ; luckily, a native passing 

 with a caicatty (a crooked knife like a biU-hook) helped me to clear 

 a space through the jungle a httle to one side, and I managed to avoid 

 it. Today's journey was fourteen miles, but owing to the bad state 

 of the road I got in very late. At 4 o'clock, when the sun was not 

 very hot, I sallied out to mount the rock again. I did not care about 

 visiting the temples a second time, because I was disappointed when 

 B. and I went into them on oiu: way down. The priests pointed out 

 the gigantic Buddhos with great satisfaction. I am sure the figures 

 are not sohd stone ; there is a large amount of plaster about them, 

 which the yellow paint hides. One thing comiected with Buddhos 

 always strikes me as ridiculous : however one may be placed, stand- 

 ing or lying, " the flame " issuuig from the head is always in a right 

 line with the body. 



I was pleased to find the Cypselus affinis building under the shel- 

 ter of the high cliff, their nests being placed in patches of fifty or 

 sixty together against the overhanging face of the rock : they were 

 composed of mud, of a hemispherical shape, with a round hole at the 

 side for egress and ingress. While on the top of the rock, being in 

 want of a specimen, I shot two of the birds, and found that the many 

 hundreds I saw hawking all round were procuring food for their 

 young ones ; this consisted of minute green tree-hoppers {Cercopida:}, 

 which they carried in a ball mider the tongue. While I was watch- 

 ing them one uttered a peculiar scream ; the cry was taken up and re- 

 echoed from the minute specks in the clear blue ether far above me ; 

 all seemed animated with a common purpose — that of uttei-ing piercing 

 cries and chasing each other roimd and round the rock a dozen times 

 or more. Suddenly, in mid career, the cries ceased, and as each bird 

 neared one spot it darted over the chff, and I saw no more of them 

 for the night. What could have thiis led all of them to follow one 

 common course so suddenly? A large swift (which I take to be 

 C. Melbd), C. Balasiensis and Macropteryx coronatus stiU kept on 

 their airy gyrations, and so continued tdl my eyes could no longer 

 follow them in the deepening shades of evening. On the summit of 

 the rock, at the roots of some dead clumps of coarse grass that had 

 once flourished in the scanty soil accumulated in the crevices, I found 

 a new Cyclostoma^^ : diameter 6 lines, axis 2y ; spire slightly exserted ; 

 whorls 5, finely striated ; umbiUcus very open ; colour a uniform 

 dark hair-brown ; operculum spiral, thin, corneous, totally retractile ; 



^ Cycl. Parapsis, Bens. MSS. 



