1849.] 



oj the Hurriallee Grass. 



479 



tion of a native I mixed potash to loosen the soil but it had the elTect 

 -of destroying the roots, and to remedy this, I covered the whole sur- 

 face with about 9 inches of light sandy stuff called wundul taken from 

 the bottom of tanks adding to it plenty of dung, I planted again and 

 the result was most favourable. Rice land is clayey and after irrigating 

 cracks and is more or less one sheet of sun burnt brick, which pre- 

 cludes the roots from bifurcating, or shoots to spring up ; the con- 

 dition of my ground will be best shown by a return of 8 crops last 

 year of as fine hay as can be produced in any part of the world, aver- 

 aging one ton a cawny, you have only to give me 30 days Law any 

 month in the hot season, to furnish a specimen to the extent of 4 

 tons. I find the roots after a year get so thick and matted, that the 

 grass cannot grow more than a foot, in fact the upper surface can 

 only be compared to a coir rug, when this is the case it takes three 

 days ploughing to get rid of the superfluous roots, and although one 

 would fancy from the cart loads taken out that few roots would be 

 left, still in about 10 days with a good flourish of manure which is 

 thrown previous to the last ploughing, it will be found after levelling, 

 ridges prepared 6 feet apart, and watering by the pecottah, that the 

 plot is as green as ever, furnishing a good return, but still better 

 the second cutting. The dry weather is more favourable to crops than 

 the monsoons, too much wet is bad, and produces frequently myriads 

 of caterpillars that devour all but the stem in a night or two. I only 

 water twice, seed will answer very well but roots of a proper des- 

 cription throw you almost a year in advance of them. I attempted 

 three modes of planting, first dibbling, sticking the roots up and 

 down ; but this was too slow a process, so inundated the ground 

 like a paddy field, and stuck them into the mud but neither plan 

 answers so well as making long furrows with a mamoty three or four 

 inches deep and laying the whole root in lengthways, for then every 

 joint or knot throws out a shoot, and covering them prepares another 

 trench so that two men cut along at a great rate, the principal part 

 of my ground was really good for nothing and took 12 to 14 men 

 a year to dig and clean an acre, for it was full of those horrible knot- 

 ty weeds that have long fibres under ground called " Cangoo." I 

 then dug a number of holes 2 feet deep, 4 in diameter, 5 feet apart 

 and put into each 2 cart loads of fresh cowdung, and covered them 

 with wundul and old manure, and, when the surface was all properly 

 prepared, planted : and 1 found that the grass that grew over the 



