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NOTES ON THE GEOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF SOUTH 

 WESTERN CEYLON, TOGETHER WITH ITS 

 RELATION TO THE REST OF THE ISLAND. 



By Hugh Nevill, Esq., F. Z. S. 



Let us for a moment fancy ourselves on the summit of 

 one of the highest hills of the Central Province, and allow the 

 eye to wander south and west over the stretch of land between 

 us and the sea; we are at once struck by the continuous and 

 step-like succession of hills and mountains, gradually rising 

 one over the other, from Galle to Pedrotallagalla; hills 

 rising too from deep time-worn valleys, which descend 

 similarly, in equal steps one after the other, with the heights 

 that overhang them. To the east and north the eye will 

 rest for awhile on similar hilly lines, till they vanish in the 

 distance, into the vast forests of the Northern and Eastern 

 Provinces, stretching to the horizon. 



There is a popular idea that the district we have thus 

 seen, was raised in its present form by some vast subterranean 

 effort, protruding at one time the masses of rock into the 

 form we still behold them, I shall endeavour to shew that 

 the probabilities are, that the whole is the result of a slow and 

 uniform elevation, still going on around us, as it did in the 

 days when our highest mountain was a rock at the bottom of 

 some vast secondary ocean ; but it must be premised, my re- 

 marks cannot be considered as conclusive; on the contrary, as 

 our knowledge of this much-neglected subject increases, I 

 confidently expect to have in some respects to modify them» 

 I shall further shew, how this slow elevatory force is* 

 by reason of its gradual effects, itself, destructive of the 

 evidence of thisxhange of the earth's surface, but it is not to 



