• Secrets of the ghost house
• Trip to the moon
• Drums and Dumbara mats - Stamp News 65
• Defence and adaptation

Secrets of the ghost house

The mist is heavy over the tea estate at Hatton. The spooky-looking planter's bungalow sits on a hill. Partly covered with mist, the house looks dark and lonely.

Every night at twelve, strange noises are heard. Sometimes figures are seen moving around and the lights flicker through the night. Many have entered this dreary domain, but not one of them has been heard of again .

People say that at six o'clock an eerie stillness comes over this house and an icy wind blows. At the window a headless man has been seen making strange signs which look as if he is calling to whoever has the courage to look.

One day a helpless, old man named Mark decided to answer the headless man's call. Not having much to lose, Mark decided to follow the ghostly figure. Walking through the mist Mark slowly approached the house The figure continued to beckon, its gestures becoming frantic as Mark approached. Mark was afraid but somehow gathered enough courage to push the front door open and enter the haunted house.

He followed the headless man and was taken through the hall to a corner bedroom. The headless man pointed to the floor and Mark realised he was supposed to dig the place where the ghost pointed. He dug at least six feet deep and found a skeleton but then the hole started caving in. Mark heard an eerie screech and the ghost quickly disappeared through the wall.

Mark was never seen or heard of again. After some years, a detective entered the haunted house, trying to discover what had happened to the lady of the house. He found a huge pile of earth dug up in a bedroom and a half covered hole. Wondering what it could all mean, Peter, the detective, began to uncover the hole. There he found Mark's skeleton on top of the skeleton of the lady who owned the house.

He gave both skeletons to the pathologist who discovered that the lady had been murdered. They were puzzled as to how Mark had died.

Talking to people in the village Peter was told that the lady of that house who always lived alone, had been murdered by her gardener, Tikiribanda. He had disappeared soon after and was never found.

The house remains empty and even now at six o'clock spooky images are seen strange noises are heard.

By Joann Fernandez, Janille Fernandez & Tahan Jansz

Trip to the moon

I was very happy when I knew that I was one of those chosen to go to the moon. My friends and I went to the NASA space camp and we were given special astronaut suits. We were then taken to the spacecraft and told to take our seats. A while later the countdown began...3..2...1..0 and there was a huge sound. It was the spacecraft blasting off.

I felt myself becoming lighter and lighter and soon with one kick I could float to the roof. Oh, what a feeling. I looked at the TV screen which pictured the view outside and saw a big planet in the dark sky. With a shock I realised that it was our Earth.

As time passed, we saw the Earth getting smaller and soon there was another object getting bigger. Then we heard the message from the control room, "You are now approaching the orbit of the Moon." Our excitement mounted as we neared the landing site. The spacecraft came down with a slight thud and the door opened.

What a sight met our eyes. There were no trees, buildings, or houses. As we stepped down, I thought of Neil Armstrong, the first man ever to walk on the Moon. We had to be careful when we walked because the Moon's gravity being less than the Earth's, each step was like a leap. I collected some samples of soil and rock in a plastic container.

Soon it was time to leave and as the spacecraft took off, I looked down at the Moon, with all its craters and thought I would never experience such a thrill in my life again.

Fahima Haseena Ayub
St. Anne's Balika Maha Vidyalaya,Wattala

Stamp News 65

Drums and Dumbara mats

By Uncle D.C.R

State patronage for the preservation and promotion of local handicrafts comes in the form of an outlet for the sale of items bought from craftsmen. Laksala, the state emporium of handicrafts set up in 1964 celebrated its silver jubilee in November 1989. To mark the occasion, a set of four stamps was issued on April 2, 1990.

The stamps featured four items of traditional crafts - drums, silverware, lacquerware and Dumbara mats.

Sri Lanka has a rich tradition of drums. A wide variety of drums are used on numerous occasions. Beating of drums is a common feature in processions, religious ceremonies, rituals and social events. It was an effective medium of mass communication in the olden days when the 'Anaberakaraya' went round the village beating a drum to keep the public informed of important happenings or official announcements.

The Re 1 stamp featured three types of popular drums - the 'geta beraya' (seen in front), 'thammettama' (somewhat close to the modern bongo with two faces) and the 'yak beraya' (a two-faced drum with a uniform base). Among other commonly used drums are the 'dawula', 'udekkiya', 'dakkiya', 'rabana' and 'thamboruwa'. Drums are made of wood and animal hide is used for the playing area.

Sri Lanka is also famous for intricately carved silverware, the subject of the Rs 2 stamp. Ornaments and utensils made of silver display a symbolic value. These include exquisite domestic ware such as tea sets, serving trays, trinkets and jewellery.

Lacquerware (Rs 3 stamp) includes a variety of domestic utensils made of wood. The more popular items include walking sticks, betel trays, jewellery boxes, ornamental dishes and decorative vases. Lacquering is done with expert skill by craftsmen who use their fingernails for the purpose.

A variety of items belonging to the Dumbara mat range are featured on the Rs 8 stamp. Among these are fine hand-woven wall hangings, colourful mats with traditional designs and shopping bags. These are exclusively produced in the Dumbara valley close to Kandy by traditional craftsmen who use thread extracted from a kind of jute plant and dyed with natural pigments obtained from resins, barks and nuts.

Dumbara mat weaving has a long history dating back to the days of ancient kings when various crafts were assigned to different communities.

Defence and adaptation

Many of the adaptations shown by plants help them to survive severe living conditions and damage by animals and man. We have already seen that plants living in or near deserts have swollen bodies in which to conserve water.

Many other plants have special coatings on their leaves or bodies which reduce water loss. These include evergreen shrubs and trees which keep their leaves in winter. The leaves of pines are tightly coiled and so lose very little water by evaporation.

Plants which live in salt marshes, such as the strange-looking glassworts, have waterproof bodies and very small leaves. Their protective outer coating prevents both the loss of body water to the outside and the inward flow of salt water. If either of these things happened, it would harm the plant.

Delicate, living tissues in woody stems and tree trunks are surrounded by a protective layer of corky bark. This acts like an insulating blanket, protecting the deeper tissues from the cold.

Insects damage trees by boring into their leaves and bark. Fungi worsen this damage by rotting away larger parts of the tree. Some trees have developed special cells which make gums or resins that discourage insects and fungi.

Almost any tree, when wounded, produces a callus or protective overgrowth, which soon seals up the wound.

Deadly poison

Spines, thorns and prickles may protect a plant against being eaten—but some animals, such as goats, have very tough mouths! Also, the prickles on seed parts usually do more to spread the seeds by clinging to animals, rather than to protect them.

Some plants are better protected against being eaten by the poisonous substances they contain. Deadly nightshade, hemlock and datura are among many plants that contain very poisonous substances called alkaloids. The leaves of laurel bushes, the roots of the cassava plant and American arrow grass all contain the deadly poison hydrocyanic acid.

The upas tree of Asia and the manchineel tree of Central America are so poisonous that local people avoid touching them or sleeping under them. More familiarly, we avoid touching poison ivy or the stinging hairs of nettles.

Some plant poisons, such as alkaloids, seem to be waste materials rather than special adaptations, but they protect just the same!

Parasitic life

Parasites live in or on other organisms; some are very harmful to their hosts, others less so. All plants harbour parasites and many plants are themselves parasites.

Among plants, fungi include the greatest number of parasites. Fungi are also frequently parasites of other plants, and therefore among the farmer's worst enemies. Moulds, mildews and fungal rots attack leaves, buds and fruits. Rusts and smuts darken and ruin the ears of cereal crops.

In woods and forests, toadstools, such as the honey fungus, attack and often kill trees. Some fungi are parasites of animals and man, causing serious diseases such as aspergillosis, and relatively minor complaints such as athlete's foot and ringworm.

Higher plants include fewer complete parasites. Dodder is a small, twining plant that uses suckers to absorb food from its hosts. It has flowers but no leaves or any other green parts. Most astonishing among higher plant parasites is Raff1esia. This is a jungle plant with the largest of all flowers but a fungus-like body that is a parasite of vines.

Other higher plants include partial parasites. These have green leaves and so can make some of their food, but they get the remainder by parasitic means. A familiar example is mistletoe, which puts down suckers into the bark of a tree to reach the living tissue underneath. Broomrape and toothwort are two common root parasites .

Insect-eaters

Insect-eating plants have very special adaptations for catching and digesting small animals. They live in marshes and jungle soils which contain little of the nitrogen that the plants need. Instead, they get nitrogen from their prey.

Best known are the sundews, which catch their prey with leaves which have sticky tentacles, and the Venus flytrap, which has hinged leaves which spring together, trapping the prey.

Bladderworts are water plants which trap very small forms of swimming life in almost equally small underwater bladders. Even lowly soil fungi can be animal trappers—one type catches worms with a sort of lasso that can only be compared with small parts of the ovary of a flower, which produce the egg cells, and small parts of the pollen grain, which produce the male nucleus.

Return to Mirror Magazine Contents