Oct, 1906.] 



303 



Saps and Exudations. 



ADMINISTRATION OF QUININE. 



His Excellency :— Have you tried administering quinine ? 

 Dr. Willis : — We use it by the hundredweight I was going to say, but 

 at least by the 20 lb. lots. 



His Excellency : — Do you find a good effect ? 



Dr. Willis : — It has a certain amount of good effect. Some coolies cannot 

 stand the country. We find two kinds of coolies stand the country best — of out- 

 side coolies. The Batticaloa Moors and the Kurunega la Sinhalese stand it best. 

 Of course, they have a fever of a very malignant type at Kurunegala. Of the local 

 people, the women, for some reason that I do nob in the least understand, are very 

 much better than the men. We have much of our work done by women coolies. The 

 men are emaciated and listless, but the women work fairly hard. I do not know 

 the reason for that. 



Mr. F. C Roles :— Might it not be because the women sleep inside and the 

 men on the verandahs ? 



Dr. Willis :— Possibly, 



His Excellency :— Yes, that might be the cause. I think the idea of the 

 Medical Department at the present moment would be to combine these experiments 

 — the administration of quinine with this anointing with oil. It will be very inter- 

 esting to find that between the two the amount of sickness in the labour is materially 

 decreased. Talking about rubber, you tell us, Dr, Willis, that the saturation of the 

 air is greater in the Northern Province than here. 



Dr. Willis assented. 



WATER IN THE NORTH. 



His Excellency :— Well, we have all remarked that in that dry section of 

 the country before you come to Elephant Pass you have jungle, which, even at the end 

 of a long drought, is perfectly green. That argues to my mind that there is a certain 

 amount of moisture in the soil at a certain depth ; and for the purpose of discovering 

 whether that is so, a water survey is being carried out by the Survey Department. 

 Granting that you have at a certain depth — 8 to 10 feet— soil which retains the 

 moisture, would it be sufficient to ensure the growth of rubber and its continuance 

 through the dry weather ? 



Dr. Willis :— If the rubber got its roots down, they would be all right. Of 

 course our experience is very limited in this district. We had rubber trees at 

 Anuradhapura which we planted in 1894, and they grew very well up to 1898. In 1898 

 they would be 4 inches in diameter. Then we had a record drought. There was no 

 water in any of the tanks, and things came to such straits that we had to lend garden 

 coolies to help to dig wells to get drinking water for Anuradhapura, and the result 

 was the absolute death of every rubber tree in the gardens. I imagine that, being 

 near the ela, the roots remained near the surface. I would not recommend anybody 

 to try rubber there without a guaranteed supply of irrigation water, and that is a bit 

 of a difficulty at present. 



His Excellency :— There is a large quantity of land available at Minneriya. 



Dr. Willis :— About 15,000 acres, but it is so far away ; and that is, I think, 

 the most malarious place in the island. However, I think that difficulty^ can be 

 removed. The district could be cleared of malaria, because the mosquitoes breed in 

 the tank. Dr. Willis explained that owing to the sloping character of the bund 

 there was a great deal of shallow water, which was saturated with mosquito larvae ; 

 and if the bund was taken straight down, this could be obviated. There were 10,000 

 acres of land in that district— all of it dead flat, with good soil, reaching down to the 



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