July 2, 1888.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
29 
forest. That clearing, be it ever remembered, was 
followed by regular planting ; by tillage which 
enabled the soil to absorb large quantities of the 
rainfall and by drainage which carried and led off into 
streams and rivers water which was superfluous 
and calculated to be injurious if left to collect in 
hollows and then rush away in tearing floods. We 
unhesitatingly commit ourselves, to the position 
that the whole of the regular operations of the 
planting enterprise in Ceylon for the last sixty 
yoars or so have been, in a climatal point of 
view, not only not injurious, but markedly 
beneiicial. After all is said and done, the area 
cleared in the mountain and hill region, say about 
350,000 acres, bears but a small proportion to the 
vast expanses left untouched, on the higher sum- 
mits and ridges especially. In consequence of 
Sir Joseph Hooker's representations in 1873, founded 
on reports of the late Dr. G. H. K. Thwaites, 
c. m. u., the fiat of the Secretary of State has now 
rendered taboo all the region above 5,000 feet 
elevation, the region of our upland prairies covered 
with lemon and other coarse grasses, but also 
the region of forests which Mr. Vincent care- 
fully and repeatedly estimated at two-thirds of 
the whole. With so much forest left and in the 
best position for cloud-compelling purposes, we may 
make our minds easy about rainfall, much of which 
could, indeed.be dispensed with by estates in the neigh- 
bourhood of Adam's Peak, where the annual supply 
ranges from 150 to 250 inches. The question of 
so-called " denudation" for estate purposes becomes 
one of merely local effect, and Mr. Vincent, with 
all his prejudices as a forester in the opposite 
direction, not only admitted the force of the 
arguments we have adduced, of re-planting, 
tillage, and drainage, but he dwelt specially on the 
exceptional mechanical condition of the soil on 
Ceylon mountain estates,— fertile yet tenacious, — 
ho that, except in periods of exceptional floods, 
the drainago water runs off clear. The dis- 
coloured condition of rivers is most frequently 
referable to the very different cultivation and 
soil of the native rice lields. It happens too 
that in the clearing and burning of hill forest for 
European planting operations, at any appreciable 
elevations, the trees destroyed were generally of but 
little value. Care was taken of Sapo (Michelia 
\iilayirica) and a few other superior kinds, which 
were utilized by the planters for buildings. No 
obony and but very little, if any, satinwood was 
thus sacrificed, for Mr. Vincent states that what 
tho natives called burutu (wul burutu) was not real 
satinwood. Col. Clarke's recommendation, there- 
fore, that the cultivation of trees should be specially 
directed to indigenous kinds, must be materially 
Qualified with reference to operations in our higher 
altitudes, where foreign trees, especially the Austra- 
lian Eucalypti, Acacias, Grcvillca robusta, with the 
Toon ((,'cdrela toona), Cryptomeria japonica, Pinus 
lonyijuUi and several species of Cupreous grow much 
faster and yield more timber and firewood than 
any indigenous trees, especially if the latter are 
brought up from lower zones. We once saw 
Cassia ximcu (popularly ('. florida, the Wa of the 
Sinhalese), growing at an elevation of about 1,000 
feet in a swamp at the entrance to Dehigama estate, 
Dimbula, but the position was specially sheltered 
and warm. On the other hand we may mention 
a case in our own experience as showing the 
superiority of exotic to indigenous trees for 
cultivation at high altitudes in Ceylon. Dr. 
Thwaites of Poradeniya, who had advised us to culti- 
vate, at an elevation of 1,600 to 0,000 feet, indigenous 
trees in preforonco to Australian and other foreign 
aperies sent us with Australian plants in 1874, 
a rjpociuien of one of our most ornamental low- 
country plants, Pehimbiya (Filicium decvpiens). Most 
of the Australian plants then received are now 
approaching or above 100 feet in height, and a blue- 
gum was cut down last year, which was at least 103 
feet high and yielded a large amount of timber. 
This is at an altitude of 4,800 feet, and the effect 
of the climate on the Pehimbiya is that it is still 
a dwarfed tree, — little more than a shrub in truth. 
For timber and for firewood both, therefore, 
we believe that foreign will be superior to 
most indigenous trees at altitudes from 4,000 or 
perhaps 3,500 feet upwards. The sapo, damba, kina 
and a few others may be exceptions, as regards 
quality of timber, but we suspect all will 
be found slow growers, comparatively. — Coffee 
plantations, as a rule, were confined to a 
zone between 2,000 and 5,000 feet altitude, to 
which zone as a general rule our remarks apply. 
But the case is very different with tea plantations 
opened in the lowcountry, where the vast majority 
of our best timber and firewood trees, — we were 
going to say abound, but we must use the alter- 
native of exist. For the destructive chena culti- 
vator, the ruthless timber contractor, and the 
reckless timber thieves have in too many cases 
been before the lowcountry planter of tea, cacao, 
coconuts, &c. But a few really fine forests wholly 
untouched, or only partially denuded of really 
good trees, are scattered at intervals over the low- 
country (we are speaking of the moist zone, for 
there are vast expanses of " forest primeval'' 
in the dry regions of the north and east of the 
island where large numbers of the best species of 
our timber trees still abound), and we quite concede 
the propriety and even the duty of Government 
taking measures to preserve and restore to a proper 
timber-yielding condition suitable reserves, for the 
sake of the planters themselves as well as for the sako 
of the general community. Colombo is very largely 
dependent for supplies of timber, bamboos and 
firewood on the new tea districts known by the 
general term of Kelani Valley as well as on the Valley 
of the Kaluganga, which the railway has now 
reached, to supplement abundant facilities of cheap 
water carriage. Timber and firewood reserves 
of some magnitude are, here, therefore, absolutely 
necessary, but in choosing them, careful and liberal 
regard must be observed with reference to the legiti- 
mate demands and aspirations of the class on which 
the colony is so largely dependent for the revenue 
which has enabled us even at this eleventh hour 
in the history of forest devastation to add a 
Forest Conservancy Department to our other nu- 
merous establishments. Happily, it would seem 
(we judge from observation during a visit to the 
Kelani Valley), that tea seems to flourish where 
coffee would absolutely refuse to grow, on chenaed 
cabook (laterite) soil, the prevailing vegetation of which 
is the small species of bamboo, Batali (Beesha 
stridula) ; although, of course, the better the soil, 
the better the tea. 
So long as the Forest Department is guided 
by a gentleman so well-informed and sensible 
as Col. Clarke, we feel very confident there 
will be no extreme reaction from former 
blameable and regrettable neglect of the forest 
resources of Ceylon, but that the via media will 
be pursued, between due regard for the rights of 
the Government (that is, the general community) 
on the one hand, and the interests of European 
capitalists and native cultivators on the other. 
Even in measures taken to check the process most 
inimical to tho existence and the production of good 
timber in Ceylon, that of chena cultivation, caution 
must be exercised. There have been and are, 
doubtless, cases where the ohena cultivator can 
say " 1 and my family mutt live" and a benevoluut 
