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and must be of good depth, preferably a free loam. Situations 

 exposed to a continuous strong wind should be avoided. The 

 above limits would cover the great bulk of the coffee districts be- 

 side much of their western slopes between 500 and, say, 2,500 feet 

 the latter elevation being taken roughly as the lower limit of the 

 coffee belt. The eastern slopes, at a similar height, would be 

 generally too dry. Large portions of Cochin and Travancore, and 

 possibly part of the eastern Ghauts would also be included, pro- 

 bably not less than 300 square miles in all, say 200,000 acres. 

 The total apparent area is far more than this, but it seems only 

 reasonable to make large deductions, as any planter will under- 

 stand, soil and exposure accounting for much. Mr. F. Lewis is 

 very clear that the growth of rubber in poor land and good forest 

 is enormously in favour of the latter, and presumably yield will 

 follow growth. 



Cinchona, it is true, died out all over Ceylon and in certain parts 

 of South India. Is there any chance of rubber doing the same ? 

 We need not, I think, be alarmed at, however much we may 

 sympathise over, what happens to Ceylon. Coffee had previously 

 gone the same road, and it is recognised that the chief asset of a 

 plant in Ceylon is the climate, whicn is but poorly backed up by 

 the soil, except in some favourable instances. There is also the 

 drawback, from a plant's sanitary point of view, of very large 

 contiguous areas of the same cultivation, so that if disease once 

 establishes itself the conditions are all in its favour. Speaking 

 generally, the soil of the former coffee districts strikes one as 

 lacking in depth and freedom, and this was probably the funda- 

 mental reason why coffee, and after it, cinchona died out there. 



Tea is one of the hardiest plants in existence, and will, we 

 trust, go on indefinitely ; but there is no doubt that rubber requires 

 depth of soil if it is to be a permanent and paying staple. The 

 bulk of our Indian soil, however, is competent to stand any test of 

 this kind. I have seen a field in Coorg which had been under 

 coffee for over 1 00 years, — not the identical trees, probably, that 

 were first planted, as the ravages of borer make such a thing un- 

 likely — but the land was standing its crops as well as ever ; in 

 Mysore I have seen still older coffee, and on the Nilgiris there are 

 flourishing fields, planted in the early forties, cropping with vigour ; 

 whilst the Government Cinchona plantations, the oldest in India, 

 are in splendid health. 



But a few cases are of little value, the best test is the continued 

 existence of the South Indian coffee districts, except, possibly 

 Ceylon's neighbour, Travancore, which has turned to tea. Cin- 

 chona also grows as well as ever with us, though now that the 

 market is ruled by high-class Java bark, it has ceased to pay us 

 to have any but the best kind, and consequently the great bulk has 

 been uprooted and harvested. There were, however, cases where 

 cinchona was planted, in suitable situations and died out as the 

 Ceylon plantations did, and this generally was due to hard sub- 

 soil and want of depth or drainage. In such places it would, I 



