coracan

“Now, curiously enough, as soon as the rice and coracan are removed and the fences are broken, the elephants walk into the fields and regularly glean them.”

My First Voyage to Southern Seas

“Close to the edge of this the cultivated land of the village extended, and people were stationed in watch-houses erected up among the branches of the trees, shrieking and yelling, and beating drums, and making every conceivable noise to drive back into the jungle the elephants who were accustomed to take their morning repast off their fields of coracan, and maize or millet.”

My First Voyage to Southern Seas

“Thus a single watcher is able to keep them off the rice and coracan lands; and in some places, where these intervene between their haunts and the tanks where they are accustomed to drink, passages are made, lined by bamboo fences, and they pass up and down them without attempting to break into the fields, though full of their favourite food.”

My First Voyage to Southern Seas

“Although the fences around these _chenas_ are little more than lines of reeds loosely fastened together, they are sufficient, with the presence of a single watcher, to prevent the entrance of the elephants, who wait patiently till the rice and _coracan_ have been removed, and the watcher withdrawn; and, then finding gaps in the fence, they may be seen gleaning among the leavings and the stubble; and they take their departure when these are exhausted, apparently in the direction of some other _chena_, which they have ascertained to be about to be cut.”

Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon