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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). 



[Vol. XL 



perhaps it is not out of place to mention the circumstance 

 that a portion of the country within the compass of these 

 rocks lies in the Dewamedi Korale, now Hatpattu. Deiva- 

 medi is a Pali compound formed by the words dewa, " cloud," 

 and madJiya, " middle," and would signify the land which is 

 not exposed to the full force of the rains, that is, neither to 

 too much nor to too little, but to a medium degree of rain. 



Campbell, in speaking generally of these rocks, says : — 



Quaint bare rocks* rise from two to four hundred feet above the 

 plain. The plain is a kind of rolling gneiss sea with waves on the 

 strike, north and south. The dip is nearly vertical in general. Yet 

 all the outlines are rounded curves. The tops of these stone-rollers 

 peer out from under the roots of great tree cacti and cocoanut palms, 

 and the wild mat of trees and creepers which men here call jungle. 

 The stone breaks naturally along the curved surface and shells off like 

 the shell of a fruit. There is no boulder clay, and there is no rolled 

 gravel to be seen. Yesterday I came down barefooted on a gneiss 

 rock, and nearly burned my feet where the sun shone. That great 

 heating process is of daily recurrence, and the daily heat must 

 penetrate an equal distance, for the nightly cooling must stop the 

 march of the sun's rays. Thus, for a given depth these bare gneiss 

 rocks must daily expand outside of a colder shell, and so in time a 

 Ceylon rock becomes like a crackle cup. When the rains begin the 

 crackle shells off.f 



The fever, for which Kurunegala has earned an unenvi- 

 able notoriety, is attributed by the natives to the heat radiated 

 by these rocks, but medical opinion is certainly opposed to* 

 this theory. The impression, no doubt, originated in the 

 fact so well stated by a learned writer on Ceylon, that : — 



At times the heat at Kurunegala is intense, in consequence of the 

 perpetual glow diffused from these granite cliffs. The warmth they 

 acquire during the blaze of noon becomes almost intolerable towards 

 evening, and the sultry night is too short to permit them to cool 

 between the setting and the rising of the sun.| 



* This writer, as well as others, who have doubtless viewed the rocks 

 only from the direction of the town, describes them as bare and barren. 

 That they are so to a great extent is due to the dip on that side being- too 

 abrupt to permit the growth of any vegetation. But one has only to 

 observe them from their opposite flank to realise that Nature could hardly 

 display a more varied scene of luxuriant vegetation than on the enormous 

 sides of these rocks. 



t " My Circular Notes," by John F. Campbell, 1876, vol. II., pp. 186-7. 



X Sir J. Emerson Tennent's " Natural History of Ceylon," p. 168. 



