This peculiarity of tropical vegetation has been turned to profitable account by the Ceylon woodmen, employed by the European planters in felling forest trees, preparatory to the cultivation of coffee. In this craft they are singularly expert, and far surpass the Malabar coolies, who assist in the same operations. In steep and mountainous places where the trees have been thus lashed together by the interlacing climbers, the practice is to cut halfway through each stem in succession, till an area of some acres in extent is prepared for the final overthrow. Then severing some tall group on the eminence, and allowing it in its descent to precipitate itself on those below, the whole expanse is in one moment brought headlong to the ground; the falling timber forcing down those beneath it by its weight, and dragging those behind to which it is harnessed by its living attachments. The crash occasioned by this startling operation is so deafeningly loud, that it is audible for two or three miles in the clear and still atmosphere of the hills.
One monstrous creeping plant called by the Kandyans the Maha-pus-wael, or "Great hollow climber,"[1] has pods, some of which I have seen fully five feet long and six inches broad, with beautiful brown beans, so large that the natives hollow them out, and carry them as tinder-boxes.
[Footnote 1: _Entada pursætha_. The same plant, when found in lower situations, where it wants the soil and moisture of the mountains, is so altered in appearance that the natives call it the "heen-pus-wael;" and even botanists have taken it for a distinct species. The beautiful mountain region of Pusilawa, now familiar as one of the finest coffee districts in Ceylon, in all probability takes its name from the giant bean, "Pus-waelawa."]
Another climber of less dimensions[1], but greater luxuriance, haunts the jungle, and often reaches the tops of the highest trees, whence it suspends large bunches of its yellow flowers, and eventually produces clusters of prickly pods containing greyish-coloured seeds, less than an inch in diameter, which are so strongly coated with silex, that they are said to strike fire like a flint.
One other curious climber is remarkable for the vigour and vitality of its vegetation, a faculty in which it equals, if it do not surpass, the banyan. This is the _Cocculus cordifolius_, the "rasa-kindu" of the Singhalese, a medicinal plant which produces the _guluncha_ of Bengal. It is largely cultivated in Ceylon, and when it has acquired the diameter of half an inch, it is not unusual for the natives to cut from the main stem a portion of from twenty to thirty feet in length, leaving the dissevered plant suspended from the branches of the tree which sustained it. The amputation naturally serves for a time to check its growth, but presently small rootlets, not thicker than a pack-thread, are seen shooting downwards from the wounded end; these swing in the wind till, reaching the ground, they attach themselves in the soil, and form new stems, which in turn, when sufficiently grown, are cut away and replaced by a subsequent growth. Such is its tenacity of life, that when the Singhalese wish to grow the _rasa-kindu_, they twist several yards of the stem into a coil of six or eight inches in diameter, and simply hang it on the branch of a tree, where it speedily puts forth its large heart-shaped leaves, and sends down its rootlets to the earth.