2 



crops are rice and coconuts. The country is not settled nearly 

 so densely as Java, and the vegetation is by no means as luxuriant. 

 At this dry season of the year, the rice fields are used chiefly 

 merely for pasture. The roadsides are broad, and frequently 

 weedy, the rice fields are generally unkempt, and there are many 

 small areas of unused ground, covered with a jungle of shrubbery 

 or second-growth forest. The country appears to offer much 

 better opportunity for botanical collecting than Java, but in 

 neatness, trimness, and intensive cultivation it is far behind. 

 This is doubtless partly due to the sparser population, and partly 



Fig. 28. The Royal Botanical Garden at Peradeniya, Ceylon. 



also to the season, for at this time of year there had been virtually 

 no rain for the two months previous, and would be none in these 

 lowlands for over a month afterward. 



The little villages, scattered at short intervals along the line, 

 have the usual cultivated plants, coconut, sugar palm, and betel 

 especially. There were the usual tropical weeds, the low tangles 

 of sensitive plant, an herbaceous Spilanthes, two species of 

 shrubby Lantana, and a species of Stachytarpheta, very similar to 

 our American Verbena hastata. 



At an altitude of 250 feet, the line reaches the first tea planta- 

 tion, and at Rambukkana, 52 miles out, it leaves the low country 



