42 
A JOURNEY FROM MADRAS THROUGH 
CHAPTER expense ; as every young tree is surrounded by a mud wall, three 
or four feet high, and perhaps twenty in diameter; and in the dry 
season the plant requires to be watered, every second or third day, 
for three years. 
Cultivation. There having now been several showers, the soil has been soft- 
ened, and the farmers are busy ploughing their dry-fields. Their 
plough, and manner of working, resemble those of Bengal. Both 
oxen and buffaloes are used, and frequently an animal of each kind 
is yoked in the same plough. This strongly marks a deficiency of 
stock ; the two animals, from their different -paces, being very ill 
suited to work together. Before the field is ploughed, it is ma- 
nured with a compost of cow dung, ashes, and mud. The manure 
is carried out by the women, in baskets placed on their heads, and 
is distributed very scantily, the baskets being emptied at the 
distance of about thirty feet from each other. 
Strata. All the way between Arcot and this place I have frequently ob- 
served strata of gneiss , consisting of the same materials with the 
common grey granite of the country, and disposed in vertical 
strata. Under the great tank here is a remarkable bed of it, con- 
sisting of rough grains, and divisible into laminae from one quarter 
to one inch thick ; and these are united into strata from one to two 
feet wide. These strata run by the compass north and south ; and 
are intermixed with others of hornblende-slate , interspersed with 
small grains of white quartz , which thus compose a granitell. 
These strata, as are also those of the grey granite throughout the 
country, are intersected nearly at right angles by veins of quartz, 
often a foot and a half wide. These veins cross the various strata 
of granite, gneiss, and hornblende , to great lengths, without altering 
their direction ; they frequently also contain felspar , or felspar and 
quartz intermixed, as is the case at Catcolli, where the veins are 
filled with a mixture of reddish felspar and quartz ; which, if not 
venigenous, would form a granitell. It has commonly been alleged, 
that large veins of these materials denote a country to be productive 
