44 JOURNAL, R.A S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XV. 



nearly vertical in general. Yet all the outlines are rounded 

 curves. The stone breaks naturally along this curved sur- 

 face and shells off in thick layers. Distant hills on the same 

 strike are broken to westward. The gigantic bosses which 

 stud the plain rise conspicuously, "so detached from the 

 original chain and so rounded by the action of the atmosphere, 

 aided by their concentric lamellation, that, but for their 

 prodigious dimensions, they might be regarded as boulders."* 

 Chief among these cylindrical masses is the " elephant rock " 

 at Kurunegala, where the gneiss is much contorted. The 

 bare gneiss weathers into angular sand and wears into 

 chemical and mechanical " pot holes." The stream which 

 flows out of " the king's bath," a round basin on the elephant 

 rock, is v/earing smaller " pot holes" below. 



The plain ends with a white sandy beach, in which the 

 rocks are battered. Rocks in the plain have the same forms 

 as rocks in the surf and at sea. If the sea-bottom were raised, 

 asserts Campbell, it would be an extension of the lowlands 

 of Ceylon. From the steamers while approaching and 

 leaving the Island, he says, he saw the usual marks of erosion 

 by streams on the hills and of marine erosion in the plains 

 and in the surf. The low grounds he took for remarkable 

 examples of marine denudation. " Ceylon, at the end of 

 Asia, is exposed in all directions, save one, to the full sweep 

 of the waves of the Southern Ocean. The surf rolls con- 

 stantly in over a shelving bottom.. At the sea-margin and 

 thence to the hills the shelving surface cuts indifferently 

 through the folds in the gneiss."t The folding of the gneiss 

 is by lateral horizontal pressure from east and west, nearly 

 parallel to the Equator. 



The rocks, plains, and hills of Ceylon may easily be 

 mistaken for glacial work, but Campbell, who travelled 

 nearly 600 miles in the Island, found no mark or sign of 

 glaciation whatsoever. After careful study he believed them 



* Tennent's " Ceylon," vol. I., pp. 16, 17. 



t The Teriod of Polar Glaciation : Appendix to "My Circular Notes," 

 by J. F. Campbell, vol. II., p. 285 et seq. 



