402 rULXE\' HILLS: Crap. XXIY. 



cess of attiring liim in a hat and trousers. Old Chenatumby 

 acted as a gnide in my walks over the hills, and was very 

 useful. 



The Pulney^ or Varragherry hills, like the Neilgherries 

 further north, branch out in an easterly direction from the 

 main line of the western ghauts. United to a portion of the 

 Anamallay range at their western end, they stretch out into 

 the Madui'a plains for a distance of fifty-four miles, with a 

 medium breadth of fifteen, and an area of 798 square miles. 

 On the south they rise very abruptly from the plains, present- 

 ing, near their summits, a perfect wall of gneiss ; liut on the 

 north and east they slope down in a succession of broken 

 ridges. The Pulneys are divided into two parts : a lower 

 series of hill and dale to the eastward, called IVEailmuUay or 

 Kunnundaven, averaging a height of 4000 feet, and covering 

 231|^ square miles, where there are extensive tracts of forest, 

 some cultivation, and several villages ; and a loftier region 

 to the westward 6000 to 7500 feet above the sea, with undu- 

 lating grassy hills and mountain-peaks, the highest of which, 

 Permanallie, attains an elevation of 8000 feet. 



The formation is gneiss, interstratified with quartz, and 

 traversed by veins of felspar ; and the rock is generally de- 

 cayed to a considerable depth on the plateau, and disinte- 

 grated so as to form a gritty clay. In the eastern part the 

 soil is a light reddish loam ; but on the western and loftier 

 half it is very poor, being a heavy black peat several feet 

 thick, with a stiff and plastic yellowish clay as a sub-soil. The 

 rains on the Neilgherry hills have the effect of mixing the 

 decaying grass with the decomposed rock, and a rich soil is 

 thus formed ; but on the plateau of the Pulneys this opera- 

 tion does not appear to take place, the one becoming a black 

 peat, and the other a stiff clayey subsoil. These remarks, 



^ Literally "Fmit-hills." 



