No. 4.—184R.] 



SINHALESE RURAL ECONOMY. 



37 



nature, immediately the plant has taken well hold of the 

 ground, the supply of water is kept up through the whole period 

 of growth until the harvest is fit for the sickle. 



To improve the fertility of their fields by manuring, the 

 natives of Cevlon have but small ideas. Amongst the hills, 

 cattle are pastured upon the stubble, and the straw after thresh- 

 ing is burnt upon the field ; but pasturage of cattle, though 

 good for the land, is only done for the purpose of feeding them, 

 and the burning of straw is only done to get rid of what is left 

 after re-thatching their buildings. 



In the vicinity of the Kandy road the straw is sold to feed 

 the draught bullocks, of which so many work on that line of 

 communication with the interior. Some of the lands near the 

 Kelani-ganga, which can be reached by boats from Colombo, 

 are manured with the bones collected in the gravets, but this 

 practice is of very small extent, and has only been adopted 

 within a few years. The system of cultivation by transplanting 

 is sometimes adopted in the low-country. To do this only a 

 few of the ridges which composed the field are sown with more 

 than a double quantity of seed; when the plant is from ten 

 inches to a foot in height, it is taken up and planted in rows in 

 other parts of the field. This labour is generally performed by 

 women, and it is said that the production from a given quantity 

 of land so cultivated is considerably increased in quantity and 

 quality. Wet weather is good for paddy crops, but dry weather 

 is seldom injurious, if the supply of water for irrigation con- 

 tinues good. On the Eastern and Southern sides of Ceylon, 

 where the rains only prevail for a limited period, and are 

 succeeded by dry weather which continues unbroken until the 

 return of the wet season, the crops are rendered somewhat 

 precarious ; and the remains of tanks which have been con- 

 structed in past ages, shew that a sufficiency of moisture from 

 natural sources to bring their crops to maturity could never be 

 depended upon in that part of the Island. Even on the 



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