might be smelted, and when found adjacent to fuel and water-carriage, it might be worked to a profit.  The quality of the iron ore found in Ceylon is singularly fine; it is easily smelted, and so pure when reduced as to resemble silver.  The rough ore produces from thirty to seventy-five per cent., and on an average fully fifty.  The iron wrought from it requires no puddling, and, converted into steel, it cuts like a diamond.  The metal could be laid down in Colombo at L6 per ton, even supposing the ore to be brought thither for smelting, and prepared with English coal; but anthracite being found upon the spot, it could be used in the proportion of three to one of the British coal; and the cost correspondingly reduced.”

[Footnote 1:  The Asiatic Annual Register for 1799 contains the following:—­

“Extract from a letter from Colombo, dated 26th Oct. 1798.

“A discovery has been lately made here of a very rich mine of quicksilver, about six miles from this place.  The appearances are very promising, for a handful of the earth on the surface will, by being washed, produce the value of a rupee.  A guard is set over it, and accounts sent express to the Madras Government.”—­P. 53.  See also PERCIVAL’S Ceylon, p. 539.

JOINVILLE, in a MS, essay on The Geology of Ceylon, now in the library of the East India Company, says that near Trincomalie there is “un sable noir, compose de detriments de trappe et de cristaux de fer, dans lequel on trouve par le lavage beaucoup de mercure.”]

Remains of ancient furnaces are met with in all directions precisely similar to those still in use amongst the natives.  The Singhalese obtain the ore they require without the trouble of mining; seeking a spot where the soil has been loosened by the latest rains, they break off a sufficient quantity, which, in less than three hours, they convert into iron by the simplest possible means.  None of their furnaces are capable of smelting more than twenty pounds of ore, and yet this quantity yields from seven to ten pounds of good metal.

The anthracite alluded to by Dr. Gygax is found in the southern range of hills near Nambepane, in close proximity to rich veins of plumbago, which are largely worked in the same district, and the quantity of the latter annually exported from Ceylon exceeds a thousand tons. Molybdena is found in profusion dispersed through many rocks in Saffragam, and it occurs in the alluvium in grey scales, so nearly resembling plumbago as to be commonly mistaken for it. Kaolin, called by the natives Kirimattie, appears at Neuera-ellia at Hewahette, Kaduganawa, and in many of the higher ranges as well as in the low country near Colombo; its colour is so clear as to suit for the manufacture of porcelain[1]; but the difficulty and cost of carriage render it as yet unavailing for commerce, and the only use to which it has hitherto been applied is to serve for whitewash instead of lime.