88 PHYSICAL GEOGKAPHY. [PART I. 



accustomed to resort to cut and peel it, a task which 

 was imposed on them as a feudal service by the native 

 sovereign, who paid an annual tribute in prepared cin- 

 namon to the Dutch, and to the present time this 

 branch of the trade in the article continues, but divested 

 of its compulsory character. 



The Dutch, in like manner, maintained, during the 

 entire period of their rule, an extensive commerce in 

 pepper worts, which still festoon the forest, but the 

 export has almost ceased from Ceylon. Along with these 

 the trunks of the larger trees are profusely covered 

 with other delicate creepers, chiefly Convolvuli and 

 Ipomoeas ; and the pitcher-plant (Nepenthes distillatoria) 

 lures the passer-by to halt and conjecture the probable 

 uses of the curious mechanism, by means of which it 

 distils a quantity of limpid fluid into the vegetable vases 

 at the extremity of its leaves. The Orchidese suspend 

 their pendulous flowers from the angles of branches, 

 whilst the bare roots and the lower part of the stem are 

 occasionally covered with fungi of the most gaudy colours, 

 bright red, yellow, and purple. 



Of the east side of the island the botany has never 

 yet been examined by any scientific resident, but the 

 productions of the hill country have been largely ex- 

 plored, and present features altogether distinct from 

 those of the plains. For the first two or three thousand 

 feet the dissimilarity is less perceptible to an unscientific 

 eye, but as we ascend, the difference becomes apparent 

 in the larger size of the leaves, and the nearly uniform 

 colour of the foliage, except where the scarlet shoots of 

 the ironwood tree (Mesua ferrea) seem like flowers in 

 their blood-red hue. Here the roots of the broad-leafed 

 wild-plantain (Musa textilis) penetrate the soil among the 

 broken rocks ; and in moist spots the graceful bamboo 

 flourishes in groups, whose feathery foliage waves like 

 the plumes of the ostrich. 1 It is at these elevations that 



1 In the Malayan peninsula the I instrument of natural music, by per- 

 bamboo has been converted into an | forating it with holes, through which 



