APPENDIX II. 



ON THE FORESTS AND WASTE LANDS OF 

 CEYLON. 



With a Map showing the Forest areas.* 



By A. F. Broun, Esq., Conservator of Forests. 



The area of uncultivated lands in Ceylon exceeds 20,000 of the 

 2 5>3^5 square miles of country contained within the Colony. The 

 proportion of good forest in these 20,000 square miles is unfor- 

 tunately small, the largest portion being taken up by scrub and 

 by grass-covered stretches of country called patanas, which find 

 their greatest development in the hills of the Province of Uva. 

 The scrub is partly natural, especially so on the sea-coast and in 

 the arid subzone, and partly the result of a destructive method of 

 cultivation known as chena, and which consists in clearing and 

 burning jungle and in raising crops for two or three years on the 

 area cleared. Now that a careful control is exercised over this 

 cultivation, nothing but small forest is felled ; but not many years 

 ago valuable forests were ruthlessly felled, and their ashes were 

 utilised as manure for the crops which were raised. Where such a 

 system of cultivation has been in force, it takes years for the forest 

 to take again a useful character. Usually a thorny scrub grows up; 

 or, as is the case in the Eastern Province, a dense growth of Iluk 

 grass (Imperata arundinaced) springs up 5 or again, as in the moist 

 districts, the ground gets covered with Lantana, or, worse, because 

 they are not soil-improvers, by Hedyotis, Ochlandra stridula, or 

 Gleichenia linearis. 



The patanas were probably at one time covered with trees, such 

 as will be described later on for the Park country, but fires and 

 grazing have destroyed the majority of these, except in sheltered 

 places such as gullies or ravines. The trees which are to be found 

 on the patanas are, at higher elevations, Rhododendron arboreum, 

 and, from 4000 feet downwards, Careya arborea, known in Ceylon as 

 ' Patana Oak,' Phyllanthus Emblica, Terminalia Belerica, T. Chebula, 

 and Pterocarpus Marsupium. These are, with few exceptions, the 

 only trees which can stand the heavy grass fires ; but in the gullies, 



* My cordial thanks are due to F. H. Grinlinton, Esq., Surveyor- 

 General of Ceylon, for permission to reproduce this Map and that of the 

 Forest Areas ; and to P. D. Warren, Esq., Assistant Surveyor- General, 

 for his kindness in supervising their reproduction. — J. D. HOOKER.^ 



