[6

AGRICULTURE.

export was already commencing, Ceylon tea being favourably
received upon the markets of Europe, The rise of the tea
industry has been phenomenal, and it is hardly safe to
assume that it has even yet reached its maximum.
During the collapse of coffee a great number of other
products, hitherto more or less vainly pressed upon the
attention of coffee planters, received a thorough trial, with
the result of the establishment of several important minor
industries, the chief among which are cacao or choeolate
and cardamoms. The cultivation of Ceard rubber also assumed
 some importance about 1882, but has since gradually
dwindled, while in recent years that of Para rubber has come
into prominence, bidding fair in a few years to form one of
the chief export industries of the Island.
In comparing the agriculture of Ceylon with that of
sountries further north the climatic conditions are of the
first importance. "There is no winter, nor even a “cold
weather ” as in Northern India, to interrupt vegetation; the
interruption, such as it is, comes rather from drought. The
[sland may be roughly divided into a wet zone and a dry
zone. The former, comprising the bulk of the mountain
region and the south-western plains lying between it and
the coast from Negombo to Matara, receives much rain from
both the monsoons, the latter enly from the north-east
monsoon. The monsoons begin with very wet weather and
end with drier periods. Hence in the wet zone the only
really dry seasons are the end of the south-west monsoon in
August or September, and that of the north-east in January,
February, and March. The latter on the western side of the
main watershed, and the former on the eastern gide, is the
“dry season” par excellence, when at times the country
shows signs of becoming parched with the heat of the sun,
the showers being few and far between. In the dry zone, on
she other hand, the “dry season” begins in January, lasting
shrough the remainder of the north-east and the bulk of the
south-west monsoon, broken to a slight extent by a few
showers in May, June, or September. During this long
drought the country lies parched under a burning sun,
3xcept in the cloudy months of the south-west monsoon.
These two zones, the wet and the dry, are sharply distinguished
 no less by their flora and their agriculture than by
sheir climate. The rich luxuriant vegetation of the wet zone
—the only part of Ceylon that most residents or visitors ever
see—is replaced by a scanty parched herbage in the open
country and by a thin undergrowth in the forests. While
in the wet zone there are two crop seasons, one in each
monsoon, in the dry there is but one, that of the north-east