230 The Rifle and Hound in Ceylon. 



gles are then neither more nor less than vast bouquets 

 of bright purple and white flowers ; the perfume is de- 

 licious, and swarms of bees migrate from other coun- 

 tries to make their harvest of honey. The quantity 

 collected is extraordinary. The bee-hunters start from 

 the low country, and spend weeks in the jungle in col- 

 lecting the honey and wax. When looking over an 

 immense tract of forest from some elevated point, the 

 thin blue lines of smoke may be seen rising in many 

 directions, marking the sites of the bee-hunters' fires. 

 Their method of taking the honey is simple enough. 

 The bees' nests hang from the boughs of the trees, and 

 a man ascends with a torch of green leaves, which 

 creates a dense smoke. He approaches the nest and 

 smokes off the swarm, which, on quitting the exterior 

 of the comb, exposes a beautiful circular mass of honey 

 and wax, generally about eighteen inches in diameter 

 and six inches thick. The bee-hunter being provided 

 with vessels formed from the rind of the gourd attached 

 to ropes, now cuts up the comb and fills his chatties, 

 lowering them down to his companions below. 



When the blossom of the nillho fades, the seed 

 forms ; this is a sweet little kernel, with the flavor of a 

 nut. The bees now leave the country, and the junglea 

 suddenly swarm, as though by magic, with pigeons, 

 jungle-fowl and rats. At length the seed is shed and 

 the nillho dies. 



The jungles then have a curious appearance. The 

 underwood being dead, the forest-trees rise from a mass 

 of dry sticks like thin hop-poles. The roots of these 

 plants very soon decay, and a few weeks of high wind 

 howling through the forest levels the whole mass, leav- 

 ing the trees standing free from underwood. The appear 



