Chap. L] 



PATENAS. 



25 



gradually or sinking into a groAvth of underwood, but 

 stopping abruptly and at once, the tallest trees forming 

 a fence around the avoided spot, as if they enclosed an 

 area of sohd stone. These sunny expanses vary in 

 width from a few yards to many thousands of acres ; in 

 the lower ranges of the hills they are covered with tall 

 lemon-grass {Aiidropogoii schoenanthus)^ of Avhich the op- 

 pressive perfimie and coarse texture, when full grown, 

 render it distasteful to cattle, which mU only crop the 

 dehcate braird that springs after the surface has been 

 annually burnt by tlie Kandyans. Two stunted trees, 

 alone, are seen to thrive in these extraordinary prairies, 

 Careya arborea, and Emblica officinalis^ and these only 

 below an altitude of 4000 feet ; above this, the lemon- 

 grass is superseded by harder and more why species ; 

 but the earth is still the same, a mixture of decomposed 

 quartz largely impregnated with oxide of u'on, but 

 wanting the phosphates and other salts which are 

 essential to highly organised vegetation.^ The extent 

 of the patena land is enormous in Ceylon, amounting to 

 miUions of acres ; and it is to be hoped that the com- 

 plaints which have hitherto been made by the experi- 

 mental cidtivators of coffee in the Kandyan provhices 

 may hereafter prove exaggerated, and that much that 

 has been attributed to tlie poverty of the soil may even- 

 tually be traced to deficiency of skill on the part of the 

 early planters. 



■ The natives in the same lofty locahties find no defi- 

 cient returns in the crops of rice, which they raise m 

 the ravines and hollows, into which the earth from 

 above has been washed by the periodical rains ; but the 

 cultivation of rice is so entkely dependent on the 



^ HrjrBOLDT is disposed to ascribe 

 tlie absence of trees iu the vast grassy 

 plains of South America, to " the 

 destructive custom of setting fire to 

 the woods, when the natives want to 

 convert the soil into pasture : when 

 during the lapse of centuries grasses 

 and plants ha\e covered the surface 



with a cai-jiet, the seeds of trees can 

 no longer germinate and fix them- 

 selves in the earth, although bii-ds 

 and winds carry them continually 

 fi'om the distant forests into the 

 ^SLvarmsihs."- -Narrative, vol. i. ch. 

 vi. p. 242. 



