NO. 48. — 1897.] GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 



55 



accumulation. Professor Morris, the Assistant Director of 

 the Royal Gardens at Kew, when Assistant Director 

 of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya, on a visit 

 to Kurunegala in 1878 on the orders of the Ceylon 

 Government, could not identify the most important plant 

 which enters largely into the floating mass, as it was not 

 sufficiently grown to enable him to do so. He identified 

 among the grasses Panicum my urns, Panicum inter - 

 rupium, and members of the Garex and Gyperus families. 

 The matted growth of these are mixed with Ceratophyllum, 

 Polygonum^ Zimnophila, Marsila, and Utricularia. 

 During the dry weather most of the grasses and sedges 

 wither, and their dead leaves accumulating around the 

 floating stems, at times 20 to 30 ft. long, serve to increase 

 periodically the size of the mass and to gather around them 

 the fine mud and other deposits brought in by the rains.* 



Dr. Morris found the residual ashes obtained by burnings 

 the peat rich in potash and other salts, and, mixed with 

 soil he thought they ought to prove a useful manure for 

 estates and gardens. Mr. Drieberg, the Superintendent of 

 the Agricultural School, Colombo, to whom the writer 

 forwarded three cases of specimens, reported as follows : — 



Specimen of case No. 1 contained 6 per cent. 

 Specimen of case No. 2 contained 13 per cent. 

 Specimen of case No. 3 contained 10 per cent. 



Mr. Drieberg observed that, unless in the neighbourhood 

 of the deposits, there was no special value to be attached to 

 peat as an organic manure for mixing with poor soils, or the 

 ash got from it on account of the potash and other mineral 

 ingredients it contains ; it had no great advantage over 

 ordinary organic refuse on the one hand or wood ashes on 

 the other. 



* The chief characteristics exhibited by a section of workable peat moss, 

 and referred to by Professor James Geikie, F.R.S., in a Paper " On the 

 Buried Forests and Peat Mosses of Scotland, and the Changes of Climate 

 which they indicate" (Trans. R. S. Edin.,vol. XXIV., 1867), are strikingly 

 identical with the above description. 



