[Footnote 1:  This palm I have called a Caryota on the authority of Dr. GARDNER, and of MOON’S Catalogue; but I have been informed by Dr. HOOKER and Mr. THWAITES that it is an Areca.  The natives identify it with the Caryota, and call it the “katu-kittul.”]

A climbing plant, the “Kudu-miris” of the Singhalese[1], very common in the hill jungles, with a diameter of three or four inches, is thickly studded with knobs about half an inch high, and from the extremity of each a thorn protrudes, as large and sharp as the bill of a sparrow-hawk.  It has been the custom of the Singhalese from time immemorial, to employ the thorny trees of their forests in the construction of defences against their enemies.  The Mahawanso relates, that in the civil wars, in the reign of Prakrama-bahu in the twelfth century, the inhabitants of the southern portion of the island intrenched themselves against his forces behind moats filled with thorns.[2] And at an earlier period, during the contest of Dutugaimunu with Elala, the same authority states, that a town which he was about to attack was “surrounded on all sides by the thorny Dadambo creeper (probably Toddalia aculeata), within which was a triple hue of fortifications, with one gate of difficult access."[3]

[Footnote 1:  Toddalia aculeata.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso ch. lxxiv.]

[Footnote 3:  Mahawanso ch. xxv.]

During the existence of the Kandyan kingdom as an independent state, before its conquest by the British, the frontier forests were so thickened and defended by dense plantations of these thorny palms and climbers at different points, as to exhibit a natural fortification impregnable to the feeble tribes on the other side, and at each pass which led to the level country, movable gates, formed of the same formidable thorny beams, were suspended as an ample security against the incursions of the naked and timid lowlanders.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The kings of Kandy maintained a regulation “that no one; on pain of death, should presume to cut a road through the forest wider than was sufficient for one person to pass.”—­WOLF’S Life and Adventures, p. 308.]

The pasture grounds throughout the vicinity of Jaffna abound in a low shrub called the Buffalo-thorn[1], the black twigs of which are beset at every joint by a pair of thorns, set opposite each other like the horns of an ox, as sharp as a needle, from two to three inches in length, and thicker at the base than the stem they grow on.

[Footnote 1:  Acacia latronum.]

The Acacia tomentosa is of the same genus, with thorns so large as to be called the “jungle-nail” by Europeans.  It is frequent in the woods of Jaffna and Manaar, where it bears the Tamil name of Aani mulla, or “elephant thorn.”  In some of these thorny plants, as in the Phoberos Goertneri, Thun.,[1] the spines grow not singly, but in branching clusters, each point presenting a spike as sharp as a lancet; and where these formidable shrubs abound they render the forest absolutely impassable, even to the elephant and to animals of great size and force.