284 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[October i. 1883. 



world's demaml, aud then what will be the price of Oeylon 

 tea,? The average price of good sound common coug&b. 

 last year in bond in Loadou was four-pcace-threo-farthiags 

 Will tea pay at that, and what will a tea estate be worth 

 with tea at that price ? There is nothing like coffee if 

 we can get the means and are allowed to cultivate as we 

 know how. With the means and allowed to cultivate as 

 we know how, we can pro luce coffee for a great deal under 

 fifty shillings a cwt., and should coffee go down to 50s. a 

 cwt. it will shut Brazil completely up, and then what will 

 be the price of our coffee ? — Yours truly, 



G. F. HALLILEY. 

 [We confess we do not understand Jlr. Halliley'e idea 

 of contagion. Leaf-disease can so reailily propagate itself 

 by its spores, that it certainly is contagious. No man with 

 any pretensions to scientific knowledge (except Mon.sieur 

 Montulair) would ever think of looking for the germs of 

 an external parasite in the .sap of a tree or in " internal 

 blisters" as the Frenchman did. No doubt tea can bo over- 

 done ; but we should be glad to believe that Mr. HaUiley 

 is right about coffee in Oeylon reviving. — Ed.] 



" C. R." who wrote so largely (pa<>e 214 T. A.) about 

 caVsayavevdeani morada, quoting, over and over again, 

 all that Markham had written, is especially auxious to 

 disavow any desire to advertise so'd imported by him- 

 self ; in fact he had none for sale when he wrote 

 his last letter. We accept his assurance that he is 

 merely anxious to prevent Ceylon being swamped by 

 bad Bolivian eeed ; just as we and others would ^vish 

 to prevent sloe leaves being substituted for tea, or 

 rubbish lor good coffee. 



Cinchona. — An important fact to bo noted by cinchona 

 planters is that barked trees coppice more freely than 

 unbarked trees. The reason for this is probably that 

 the shock occasioned the tree by the removal of its bark 

 stimulates the vital activity of its roots. That such is 

 the case is more advantageous than otherwise, as 

 a tree can be barked until it shows signs of decay, 

 when coppicing may he adopted, and the process of 

 hai-vestiug repeated over a series of years. — Madras 

 Times, Sept. 14th. 



Ceara Rubber Grown in Colombo. — A well-known 

 Colombo iiroker has favoured us with the following 

 report on the ijiece of rubber taken and prepared 

 from an 18 mouths' old tree in Maradana : — " I re- 

 turn you the Gilliatt sample of indiarnbliei'. It is 

 very good, much better than the best of previous 

 samples. But I cannot get any rfliable valuation. 



's people — one of whom seems to have had some 



experience in rubber — would like a good lot of this 

 quality as a sample shipmeut. Until we can do this 

 it will bo difficult to get a good practical idea." 



Coal for Tea Preparation. —At the Maskeliya 

 meeting this qucstiou came up and Mr. T. Gray 

 spoke in favour of coal versus charcoal. But in view 

 of the inevitable smoke, would not coal be objection- 

 able ? We should think that coke (for which some 

 of the Sirocco driers are specially adapted) would be 

 preferable. The carriage of coke would certainly be 

 less costly than that of coal. We should, like to 

 learn the results of the experience of those who have 

 tried coal or coke,_ as fuel for drying machines ; for 

 wo do not supjiose coal would answer for the ordiiiary 

 furnace or stoves? 



Coffee. — The present method employed of prepai-iug 

 coffee for the market is to l)e deprecated. The sensible 

 Arabs dry theu' coffee in the pulp, which preserves the 

 aroma of the berry, and the secret of the ffavour and value 

 of the Mocha. If di-y cheiTy is sent to the cm-ers hero, 

 they at once class it as native coffee, and its value is 

 depreciated. Drying cofTee in the pulp \\ill scarcely find 

 favour, because the mode of preparation for the market 

 must bo altered, and the niacbiuery modified, hut the 

 quality wiU be so gi'eatly improved that the cost of new 

 appliances ought to be of secondary consideration. — 

 Madi as Times, Sept. 14th. 



Tea OuLTlVATioN in Cbylon will indeed make 

 a wonderful start n<xt year, if it be true as 

 we hear that while one Colombo planting firm is 

 getting 2,000 mannds of seed from Northern India, 

 on account of themselves and their constituents, 

 and another has invested in 1150,000 worth of 

 seed. 



Ceaea Rubber. — The following is the opiaion of 

 Dr. Trimeu on iVlr. Gilliat's process: — "All I can say 

 about your cutter is that having bad the opportunity 

 of seeing it used on Ceararubber trees, I consider 

 that it does very well what it was intended to 

 do, viz. : .secure a large How of milk with very little 

 injury to the cambium and young wood." 



Nutmeg.s. — There is a possibility of large fortunes 

 being made in New Guinea (remarks the Pioneer Mail) 

 by the cultivation of tlie nutmeg. The nutmeg tree 

 is found in great abundance in that island, and gives 

 its name to one of tlie fiaest pigpone in the world, a 

 bird as large as the hen turkey. Since t'le collapse of 

 the nutmeg at Singapore we have been indebted, for 

 the most part, to our old rivals, the Dutch, for nut- 

 meg and mace. But tlie nutmeg trees of Singapore 

 were imp .itations ; the tree was not so indigenous 

 to the place in Kew Guinea. The cultivation is, or 

 was, the most prolitable of anything we know of, 

 surpassing cinchona and coffee iu their best days. 

 Singapore owners of nutmeg plantations — mere com- 

 pounds pl.iuted with the handsome tree — used to 

 realtso their £4,000 or .£.5,000 a year; Init in one dark 

 and memorable year the trees were all stricken with 

 a blight, and numbers of planters enjoying large in- 

 comes were reduced to poverty. The tree became 

 white and leafless, a vegetable skuleton ; and no 

 attempt to revive the cultivation of the nutme;; at 

 Singapore has ever proved successful. — Sydney Mail, 

 August 21st. 



Education and Agricultueb in India. — In an 

 article on "the net results primay education" 

 tlie Lahore Civil and Military Gazette remarks : — 

 An enquiry into the subsequent history of the 3,014 

 ex-students, as far a3 they could be traced, showed 

 the curious result that, although a great majority of 

 their parents had been — of whatever caste— connected 

 with agriculture either as landlords, ten'ints, labourers, 

 or as a secondary pursuit, their sons, who bad been 

 to school, almost invariably showed an aversion to 

 agriculture iu any form. As the primary system of 

 education was mainly intended for the agricultural 

 classes, this fast is worthy of note. The proportion 

 of parents and sous according to profession, is as 

 follows : — 



AyricuUtcral. Non- Agricultural, 



Parents ... 61 per cent. 39 per cent. 



Sous ... 21 „ 79 „ 



Mr. Nesfield has a curious but not impossible theory. 

 At the rapidly developing rate of Hindu boyhood, his 

 muscles have become relaxed and his constitution en- 

 feebled, by sedentary life, so that he is unable again 

 to take to hard hold labour iu the sun ; and the same 

 desuetude of manual labour, at the m 'st impression- 

 able age, makes him disinclined or unable to take up 

 any form of skilled artisan work, of which his father, 

 although unable to read or write, is by constant prac- 

 tice for his youth, a master. Iu support of this theory 

 thnt, for artisan work, school-teiichiug is not merely 

 useless, but positively detrimeutal, Mr. Nestield 

 gives a list of the seventeen leading hand.S in the Oudh 

 and Rohillihund railway workshops at Lucknow — men 

 employed as litters, turners, blacksmiths, braesmoul- 

 ders, and other high-class craf's, many of them with 

 seventy or eighty men under them. Out of these 

 seventeen men, sixteen were wholly illiterate, and the 

 seventeenth only able to just read and write. 



