312 Dr. Davy on the Geology and Mineralogy of Ceylon . 
The forms of the hills and mountains are not very uniform ; most 
commonly conical and peaked; occasionally craggy and tabular. 
The direction, too, of the mountain chains, is various. 
Every appearance points to great antiquity of formation : few of 
the mountains exhibit naked rock; the majority of them are covered 
with debris, and at the base and on the sides of every hill and 
mountain, there is such an accumulation of alluvium, as clearly 
proves that the degradation of the heights has been very great. The 
low country is almost entirely covered with the same kind of debris, 
insulated rocks being of rare occurrence. 
The soil corresponds to the rocks from which it is derived: 
though almost universally teeming with vegetation in the interior ^ 
it is generally poor, and contains but a small proportion of vegetable 
matter, seldom more than one or two per cent. — proving that the 
luxuriant vegetation of the country, and particularly of the Kandian 
country, is more dependent on the high temperature of a tropical 
sun, and the abundance of water in a mountainous region, than on 
richness of soil, which is confirmed by the natural sterility of certain 
parts of the low country that are subject to long continued 
droughts. 
The water, whether of springs or rivers, accords also with the 
nature of the island : on the coast it is of ordinary purity ; amongst 
the mountains of the interior, it is rarely quite pure ; all the water 
round Kandy, where I have particularly examined it, is of the spe- 
cific gravity of distilled water, only very slightly impregnated with 
fixed air, and of such a temperature as it acquires by the influence of 
the atmosphere and of the bodies with which it comes into contact ; 
spring water being of about the mean annual temperature of the 
place where it rises. The only exception that I am acquainted with, 
in regard to temperature, occurs in the neighbourhood of Trinco- 
