552 
iiupplement to the '^Tropical Agncuttuvist." [June i, 1892. 
medicine ■which is generally a trifling item) from 
the sale of produce and preparations. At least IS 
flowers arrive at maturity on each tree.* 
If a bottle of sweet toddy is left for a few 
hours, it becomes sour without any appli- 
cation of leaves or barks of trees. But such 
toddy is said to be not fit for drinking purposes. 
It is in order to ensure fermentation that the 
barks of trees &c. are put. During the Kandyan 
Government, measures were passed to prosecute 
sellers as well as drinkers of toddy. From a 
dozen bottles of sweet toddy which fetch at the 
rate of 2^ cents each, 8 of sour toddy could be 
prepared, which fetches 5 cents each.f Toddy 
is said to be eificacious in cases of sore mouth, 
biliousness, and cutaneous diseases. 
Mr. Lee, in his History of Ceylon, says : — 
"There is another disease called the Beri-beri, 
to which Europeans are very subject ; it is a 
sort of cramp so very violent that it prostrates 
those who are attacked by it, and the diseased 
part might be cut with a knife without causing 
any pain. The best remedy is to eat pork and 
biscuit, to drink j)alm-wine or toddy, and to 
smoke ; three or four months living in this man- 
ner cures the patient entirely ; on this account 
the Captain-General Antonio de Mascarenhes, by 
the physicians' advice, issued an order for every 
one to smoke in the camp, and to give a good 
example, he adopted the practice himself first, 
and after that time the disease was far less 
prevalent." 
T. B. P. Kbhelpannala. 
(To be continued.) 
* 
NOTES FROM A TRAVELLER'S DIARY- 
I have just had a run over a large area of 
the Province of Uva. By far the most interesting 
place I visited in the province was the Happy 
Valley Industrial and Reformatory Schools. 1 
alluded to this Institution in some of my pre- 
vious notes, but I was then able to say very 
little. After the return of its founder, the 
Rev. S. Langdon, from England, the Institution 
has put on fresh vigour, and the way in which 
the work is now carried on is all that could 
be desired, and is sure to elicit popular applause. 
The most interesting part of the Institution 
is the Reformatoiy School where about 40 
juvenile offenders are at present undergoing 
sentence of detention. Agricultural labour, dairy 
farming, poultry-keeping, tailoring, &c. are the 
principal industries. The dairy farm is the best 
that I have as yet seen in the island. A fine 
lot of selected poultry is kept, and the eggs are 
hatched by the artificial mode of incubation. 
Curiously, the head juvenile offender at the Re- 
formatory {Marml by name) who is (ilioiit 11 
years of age, is a boy who was once charged 
before the I'olice Magistrate of Colombo with 
stealing arrowroot from nn experimental plot 
at thr; Colombo Scliool of Agriculture. He was. 
* The racoincs are attacked hy boctteB, while the 
toddy iw drunk by batH. Great damage is done in 
thiB way to trccB. 
\ In Korcie partH of the Kandya)i DisliictH vinegar 
iB alHO preijarcd from toddy. 
however, let off with a warning, but has subse- 
quently been sent to the Reformatory for steal- 
ing some clothes in Colombo. This boy is now 
the favourite of the place, has forgotten all 
his thieving propensities, and I am assured that 
he has thoroughly reformed. He learns dairy 
farming and gardening, and seemed to be an 
expert in making butter and cream, and I would 
not be sui'prised if he be some day called to 
the Colombo School of Agriculture as a dairy 
expert. 
A large area of land at the Happy Valley 
has been put under tea experiments in the cul- 
tivation of fruit, paddy, tobacco and various 
other crops are also being carried on. It would 
be well if experiments in the cultivation of barley 
are also started on a somewhat large scale. 
I am surprised that the cultivation of ginger 
does not attract the attention it deserves of the 
goyiyas of Uva. A large quantity of the ginger 
consumed in the Province, I think, is brought from 
the Western Province. During the late epidemic 
of cholera, in some parts of the Province, a 
pound of ginger was sold for from Rl to R2. 
The lowest price of a pound of ginger at Badulla 
on any day is 121 cents. 
The patanas of Uva may in some respects 
be compared to some of the owita lands we 
often meet with in the 'Western Province, covered 
with rank grass. Bracken fern is commonly met 
with on the patanas, the ]:resence of which is 
supposed to indicate fertility of the soil ; the 
daffodil orchid is also common, and it is easily 
recognised by the yellow colour of its flowers 
which appear in the months of Februaiy and 
March, peeping through the grass on their long 
slender stalks from among the patana grass. 
The couiit/y around Happy Valley seems to 
have once been thickly populated, and was 
probably the site of Portuguese encampaients 
during the struggles they had with the Sinhalese 
kings. The names of places such as Halatutenne 
(rice store plain), Haldummulle, (the corner at 
which rice was distributed) and Bathgangoda 
(the villages in which the rice was cooked and 
served) bear out these facts. 
CROTON TIGLIUM. 
Some time ago a writer in the Times of Ceylon 
called attention to the danger in planting 
croton-oil trees among tea bushes, as was then 
the case on many places in the Matale district, 
since it was feared that while plucking the leaves 
from the latter, some leaves of the former 
might accidently fall into the baskets and be 
manufactured into tea. Natives have a dread 
of the croton tree, as its poisonous properties 
are so well known to them, that they fear even 
to pass under its shadow. Even native medical 
practitioners, in prescribing the oil obtained from 
the seed as a purgative, use only a very small 
([uantity, the dose for nn adult being about half 
a gi'fiin or only a drop which is rubbed on a 
betel leaf and given to the patient to be chewed 
and swallowed. Some Sinhalese cartmen at 
