172 EDUCATION : PRINTING AND OLAS.

including the important Reformatory so successfully maintained
 by the Roman Catholics at Maggona, and also the wood
and metal work of the Technical College. A series of photographs
 illustrates the system of Education in Ceylon, which
has been already fully discussed in Chapter ITI.
The admirably equipped Printing Department of the
Government, presided over by Mr. G. J. A, Skeen—whose
personal aid in the production of this Handbook the Sub-Committee
 desire to acknowledge—is represented by a collection
 of some 150 or more items, selected Principally from
official publications, containing information on the administration,
 history, science, and literature of the country. The
case in which they are displayed is hung with photographs
of the 300 employés and views of the interior of the office.
The three chief daily newspapers published in Ceylon—The
Ceylon Observer,” “ The Times of Ceylon,” and “The Ceylon
Independent,” as well as the Sinhalese papers, * Sihala
Samaya” and “Dinakaraprakasa,” and the “Albion Press”
at Galle exhibit specimens of the various works issued from
their presses.
Sir Emerson Tennent, in his History of Ceylon, describes
the preparation of the Talipot leaf, still used instead of paper
in the Buddhist Temples :—
“ The books of the Sinhalese are formed to-day, as they have been
for ages past, of olas, or strips taken from the young leaves of the
talipot or palmyra palm cut before they have acquired the dark shade
and strong texture which belong to the full-grown frond. After
undergoing a process (one stage of which consists in steeping them
in hot water and sometimes in milk to preserve their flexibility) they
are submitted to pressure to render their surface uniformly smooth.
They are cut into strips of two or three inches in breadth and from
one to three feet long, These are pierced with two holes, one near
each end, through which a cord is passed, so as to secure them between
two wooden covers, lacquered and ornamented with coloured devices.
The leaves, thus strung together and secured, form a book.
On these palm leaves the custom is to write with an iron stile, held
nearly upright and steadied by a nick cut to receive it in the thumb
pail of the left-hand. The stile is sometimes richly ornamented,
shaped like an arrow, and inlaid with gold, one blade of the feather
serving as a knife to trim the leaf preparatory to writing. The case
is sometimes made of carved ivory bound with hoops of filagreed silver.
The furrow made by the pressure of the stile is rendered visible by
the application of charcoal ground with fragrant oil, to the odour of
which the natives ascribe the remarkable state of preservation in
which their most sacred books are found, its aromatic properties
securing the leaves from destruction by white ants and other insects.”

On these are written all the ancient books of the Sinhalese—the
 Buddhist Tripitaka was thus written in A.D. 89—
which are being gradually printed and translated. There