3 i6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



men who are concerned with one industry only. Thus there 

 are at Buitenzorg, and elsewhere in Java, laboratories devoted 

 entirely to sugar, to tea, to coffee, to cinchona, and so on, while 

 in Ceylon there are as yet no specialists devoted entirely to one 

 industry. An agricultural department, similar to the Ceylon 

 department, has been formed simultaneously in the West Indies, 

 and within the last two years, stimulated by the success of 

 these two institutions, departments of agriculture, on a larger 

 or smaller scale, have been formed in practically every British 

 tropical possession, even India. 



The growth of the Ceylon department began in 1899, and in 

 that year and the next two important appointments were made, 

 those of an Entomologist and a Mycologist, for the study of the 

 diseases caused in cultivated plants by insects and by fungi 

 respectively. When these appointments were made, the general 

 feeling of British planters was against owning up to any attack 

 of disease on their plantations. If a man had such an attack, 

 his idea was to keep it quiet, with the very common result that 

 it spread badly over his own place, and got into his neighbours' 

 plantations. The actual cause which stimulated the appoint- 

 ment of these officers was an outbreak of " cacao canker," a 

 disease caused by a Nectria closely similar to that causing the 

 apple canker of Europe. This disease began probably about 

 1894, and by 1897 was so rampant that it could no longer be 

 concealed ; at that period there was a probability that Ceylon 

 might lose her cacao industry altogether. 



The newly appointed mycologist devoted much of his time to 

 this disease, and worked out the methods of attacking it, with 

 the result that those plantations on which his recommendations 

 were carried out became gradually freed of the disease, and now 

 nearly every cacao estate in Ceylon keeps it under by use of these 

 methods, so that it is no longer looked upon as a serious menace 

 to the cultivation. 



Gradually the result of this work, and of similar work done 

 by the Entomologist, has forced itself upon the minds of the 

 Ceylon planters, and now on the majority of estates the greatest 

 care is taken to look out for the first symptoms of disease, and to 

 send at once to the Peradeniya staff for aid in combating it. So 

 far has opinion turned in the opposite direction from that which 

 it formerly occupied, that the newspapers of Ceylon are now 

 almost the first to draw attention to any slight outbreak of 



