These park-like meadows, or, as the natives call them, "talawas," vary in extent from one to a thousand acres.

They are belted by the surrounding woods, and studded with groups of timber and sometimes with single trees of majestic dimensions.

Through these pastures the deer troop in herds within gunshot, bounding into the nearest cover when disturbed.
Lower still and immediately adjoining the sea-coast, the broken forest gives place to brushwood, with here and there an assemblage of dwarf shrubs; but as far as the eye can reach, there is one vast level of impenetrable jungle, broken only by the long sweep of salt marshes which form lakes in the rainy season, but are dry between the monsoons, and crusted with crystals that glitter like snow in the sunshine.
On the western side of the island the rivers have formed broad alluvial plains, in which the Dutch attempted to grow sugar.

The experiment has been often resumed since; but even here the soil is so defective, that the cost of artificially enriching it has hitherto been a serious obstruction to success commercially, although in one or two instances, plantations on a small scale have succeeded to a certain extent.
METALS .-- The plutonic rocks of Ceylon are but slightly metalliferous, and hitherto their veins and deposits have been but imperfectly examined.

The first successful survey attempted by the Government was undertaken during the administration of Viscount Torrington, who, in 1847, commissioned Dr.Gygax to proceed to the hill district south of Adam's Peak, and furnish a report on its products.