978 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol XXV 111. 
section shows a trough or saucer-like folding, so that at each end of the section 
there are grass eovered headlands: Battery and Ray Points on the west and Naval 
Point on the east of the section. Between these points is a stretch of low-lying 
land composed of coral debris and marine alluvium, and, as Hochstetter pointed 
out, this serves as an admirable basis for the growth of many cocoanut-palms and 
screw-pines. Across the other side of the channel on the north-east shore of 
Xankauri Island the same bending of the clay strata is discernible, though here 
it is cut short on the east by the outcrop of true rock, which forms the head- 
land, Reed Point. In both cases we find that the eastern-most end of the clay 
stratum is characterised by the interpolation of a bed of conglomerate and 
there seems little room for doubt that originally the deposits were continuous. 
In places where rain has washed away the surface soil and has formed irregular 
gullies and water coui'ses,this magnesian clay can be seen to be of a yellow-ochre 
or brick-red colour, and, when dry, it hardens and cracks into small irregular 
blocks, like a child’s toy bricks. As a result of this clay formation the greater 
part of these islands, and more particularly the higher levels and interior, consists 
of open grass-land with here and there patches of bracken fern and the low grow- 
ing sensitive plant Mimosa pudica. This latter plant, which is now nothing 
but a weed-pest, appears to have been introduced accidentally, during the time 
of the last British occupation, in sheep fodder from the Andamans. Scattered 
about the slopes are screw-pines (Pandanus odoratissimus) that are, however, 
only miniatures of the trees which grow in more suitable soil. This type of scenery 
has been termed ‘ park like’ but the similarity of appearance is superficial rather 
than real, for m this case the open spaces are due, in the main at any rate, to the 
sterility of the soil, though in a lesser degree they are maintained by human 
agency, for the Nicobarese periodically set fire to the grass, thus destroying any 
shrubs or young trees that may have obtained a foot-hold. Anderson§ indeed, 
goes so far as to deny that it is the sterility of the soil that produces the 
open grass lands and attributes their presence entirely to this periodical 
burning, and, in support of his view, he states that on Teressa the natives 
enclose parts of this clay land and form fertile gardens, while in places the 
line between grass-land and primaeval forest is much too straight to be attri- 
buted to changes in the geological character of the soil. In some of the smaller 
ravines and valleys, and especially in the neighbourhood of patches of primaeval 
forest, one sometimes comes across an area dotted over with low bushes that 
gives one the impression that it was originally a garden but has since been 
abandoned and allowed to run wild. Frequenting these spots one usually finds a 
number of small birds, conspicuous among which are brightly coloured bulbuls 
and little flycatchers. The grass that covers these lands is of an extremely 
coarse kind, knorvn as ‘ lalang’ or tbatching-grass, and it attains to a height of 
two to three feet. Incidentally it has an extremely sharp edge and when drawn 
across the skin causes a cut that, though usually not deep, can be extremely 
painful. Coarse though the grass is, it serves to supjjort quite a respectable 
herd of wild cattle, the feral descendants of the domestic herds maintained by 
the missionaries in the old days or introduced during the period of occupation by 
the Penal Settlement from 1869 — 1888. These cattle roam about usually in 
small parties consisting of one bull, one or two cows and often several calves of 
various ages. At the time of our stay in Nankauri Harbour a gang of convicts 
from the Penal Settlement in Port Blair, under the charge of a few Indian Police, 
were engaged in clearing away the jungle from the south end of Camorta. The 
passion of Indians for milk needs no emphasis and the manner in which the 
cravings of these men were satisfied was as follows : — a small herd containing 
a young calf would be carefully marked down in a small area of open land, and 
§ Anderson, A. R. S, “ Diary of a visit to the Nicobars for census purposes ” 
•Census of India, 1901, Vol. Ill, pp. 16.3-164, 1903. 
