Note 1 — CHAP. II.

: See DARWIN'S Naturalist's Voyage, ch. iii. for an account of those vitrified siliceous tubes which are formed by lightning entering loose sand. During a thunderstorm which passed over Galle, on the 16th May, 1854, the fortifications were shaken by lightning, and an extraordinary cavity was opened behind the retaining wall of the rampart, where a hole, a yard in diameter, was carried into the ground to the depth of twenty feet, and two chambers, each six feet in length, branched out on either side at its extremity.

2: One morning on awaking at Pusilawa, in the hills between Kandy and Neuera-ellia, I was taken to see the effect of a few hours' rain, during the night, on a macadamised road which I had passed the evening before. There was no symptom of a storm at sunset, and the morning was bright and cloudless; but between midnight and dawn such an inundation had swept the highway that in many places the metal had been washed over the face of the acclivity; and in one spot where a sudden bend forced the torrent to impinge against the bank, it had scooped out an excavation extending to the centre of the high road, thirteen feet in diameter, and deep enough to hold a carriage and horses.