Learning and Arts of the Ceylonese. 207 
ous country, and who have been accustomed to the habits of 
pastoral life, indolent in the extreme. Their soil, where it can 
be watered, yields them a sufficient quantity of rice to main- 
tain their existence, and this seems almost as much as they 
desire. The example of the Europeans in the cultivation of 
the cinnamon has not yet awakened a spirit of emulation among 
the natives, nor has any improvement of their rude agricultu- 
ral instruments been as yet introduced. Their plough consists 
merely of a crooked piece of wood, shaped in such a manner 
that the one end serves, for a handle, while the other, which is 
shod with iron to prevent the wood from wearing, ploughs, or 
rather tears up the ground. This very rude instrument, how- 
ever, serves their purpose, as it is not required to make regular 
furrow's, but merely to loosen the earth so as to allow the water 
with which they inundate it to drench it completely. After 
a first ploughing with this instrument the fields are flooded ; 
and after they have lain some time under water, it is let oif, 
and they are ploughed anew. The water, besides nourishing 
the rice, serves the purpose of rotting the weeds. The only good 
trait in their husbandry is the care Avith which they guard against 
weeds: this indeed costs them little labour where they have an 
opportunity of flooding the grounds. The other tools they em- 
ploy in agriculture are, a board for smoothing their fields, 
which they drag over them edgewise with their oxen, and a 
piece of board fastened to the end of a long pole, which serves 
them in place of rakes. 
When the season for ploughing arrives, each village makes it 
a common concern, and every one attends wdth his plough and 
his oxen till the whole of the fields belonging to that society 
be finished. The same method is followed in reaping tlxe corn; 
