ghtning, 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

This violence, however, seldom lasts more than an hour or two, and
gradually abates after intermittent paroxysms, and a serenely clear sky
supervenes. For some days, heavy showers continue to fall at intervals
in the forenoon; and the evenings which follow are embellished by
sunsets of the most gorgeous splendour, lighting the fragments of clouds
that survive the recent storm.

[Sidenote:
Wind S.W.
Temperature, 24 hours:
Mean greatest 85.8 deg.
Mean least 74.4 deg.
Rain (inches) 6.8]

_June_.--The extreme heat of the previous month becomes modified in
June: the winds continue steadily to blow from the south-west, and
frequent showers, accompanied by lightning and thunder, serve still
further to diffuse coolness throughout the atmosphere and verdure over
the earth.

So instantaneous is the response of Nature to the influence of returning
moisture, that, in a single day, and almost between sunset and dawn, the
green hue of reviving vegetation begins to tint the saturated ground. In
ponds, from which but a week before the wind blew clouds of sandy dust,
the peasantry are now to be seen catching the re-animated fish; and
tank-shells and water-beetles revive and wander over the submerged
sedges. The electricity of the air stimulates the vegetation of the
trees; and scarce a week will elapse till the plants are covered with
the larvae of butterflies, the forest murmuring with the hum of insects,
and the air harmonious with the voice of birds.

The extent