3i6 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[November i, 1883. 



TEA AND TEA-MAKKS. 



Rookwood, Deltota, 25th Sep. 1883. 

 Dear Mr. Editor -I am glad to see, by Messrs. 

 W H. Davles & Co. 'a letter in your issue of ^Oth, 

 I was mistaken this time in supposing my estate 

 mark had been pirated ui.on. 1 certainly did se 

 that finn 3i chests of Pckoc souchong on May 

 Ifith last, with shipping mark "D." and estate mark 

 ••Rookwood" as uBual, but I could hardly suppose 

 this Tmall invoice wa^ for .he Lane. W.th reference 

 to other remarks, I should say purohasers of tea 

 were quite justilied in selling under (be mark, or 

 distinimshing name, on the chest, when they bought 

 it but not justified in using the particidar mark ot 

 th'at estate if not affixed by the seller. I would 

 however warn tea-growers that piracy of marks, 

 locally, tloes take place. Many instances have been 

 brought to my notice, .and in one case the lowest 

 China Congou aa sold in the Pettah was sent to me 

 in what was apparently one of my estate packets 

 of Pekoe-souchong blend. It behoves us to be on the 

 look-out, and I hope this little storm may not have 

 been in vain.— I am, yours faithfully, 



C. SPEARMAN ARMSTRONG. 



DEGENERACY OF COFFEE FROM THE CHOICE 

 OF INFERIOR SEED AND THE SELF-FERTILIZ- 

 ATION OF THE PLANTS IN THE ABS1':NCE OP 

 BEES ACCOUNTS FOR THE PREVALENCE OF 

 HEMILEIA VASTATIilX AND ALL THE TROU- 

 BLES OF CEYLON AND INDIAN COFFEE 

 PLANTERS ? 

 Dear Sib.—I have been prevented by various occur- 

 rences from supplementing before now thoa>i letters 

 vou published for me in the Trnpical Agncultimst 

 Vol I. pages 15 and 310, regarding the probabdity 

 of leaf-disease and decrease in cropping capabilities ot 

 cofTeo being ascribed to the degeneracy of the plant 

 induced by the self-fertilization of tlie flowers on the 

 parent tree, and I intended to have traced b.ick to its 

 sour -e the prime cause why tlie Howers should have 

 b°en' forced to receive this sdf-fertiliz.ation instead of 

 the more natural and acceptable cross. I w.l now 

 however as such a lengthened period has elapsed since 

 those letters were written, reverse this procedure. 



I, is well-known that wh'.re large area>i of one 

 species of plant are under cultivation disease in some 

 form or another is generally sooner or later developed, 

 and the causes when finally determined vary consider- 

 ablv with diEferent productions, sometimes from over- 

 crowding, often through the mistaken introduction of 

 varieties which are not suited to that soil. The 

 cultivator in most cases endeavours as far as he is 

 .able to reduce the possibility of dise.ase becoming 

 cnid-mical, by the careful selection of new stock for 

 the rapleuishiog of his land from distant localities 

 possessing similar attributes to hia own soil We, 

 in Cevlon liave not done this with that care 

 which is essential to success. Beyond selecting our 

 seed from healthy trees giving a good sample from 

 estates near .at hand, little or no trouble has been 

 exercised. ;.nd I am afraid it must be owned that 

 where clearings and many of them have been opened 

 simultaneously in one district, seed was usually obtained 

 anywhere and anyhow so long as it was put into 

 nuVseiies in time, and it is to this very extensive 

 manner of opening up fresh land that I ascribe all 

 our present troubles and diificnlties. 



Tu IS5'; there were 80,950 acres opened for coffee, 

 .and in 1869, when leaf-disease was first reported, this 

 acrenL'e had more than doubled itself, being then 

 176 467 acres-this in a period roughly equivalent to 

 five generations of coffee; but dnriug this same time 



the coffee in bearing had increased from 64,000 acres 

 to 160,000 acres, or had nearly been trebled. Since 

 then it has averaged .about5,000 acres jier annum increase. 

 I may put my theory as to the derivation of leaf- 

 disease into four stiges :— first, to the wholesale de- 

 struction of forest ; secondly, reduction in the number 

 of bees present ; thirdly, inelfioient fertilization ; and, 

 lastly, the consequent fitness for the reception and 

 retention of disease. The first needs no remark from 

 me. Your "Directory" furnishes full statistics of the 

 enormous acreage ot forest-land that has been felled 

 and opened for various purposes, and the diminution 

 in the number of bees (that have by these means 

 been expelled from their homes) must be marked 

 enouoh even to the most unobservant ; how seldom 

 now does one note the swiirms passing overhead com- 

 pared with previously— they are in fact comparatively 

 rare — and how rarely does one see honey in the 

 planter's bungalow— not because his taste for it; is lesa 

 or the native's desire to .appropriate it for his own 

 use grown stronger, but simply because it is so 

 seldom procurable ; and this proves the absence of 

 bees. Fertilization of Howers such as coffee blossom 

 is chiefly through the agency of insects, bees occupy- 

 ing the principal position as instrumental in effecting it, 

 and it may be seen at once from the manner in which in 

 coffee the style is prolonged so far beyond the stamens 

 and its slight droop towards the lowest petal of the 

 corolla, that it is admirably adapted to be fertilized 

 by the means of bees which generally alight on the 

 lowest petal, and so first have to brush past the stigma, 

 thus depositing pollen from some flower they have 

 visited previously upon it, and then, after passing the 

 style on their way to gather nectar from the centre 

 of the corolla, come in contact with the stamens, the 

 doUen froiu which fertilizes the next flower they visit. 

 All hermaphrodite flowers accept pollen from another 

 one of the same species in preference to their own, 

 but fertiKzatiou can of course readily result from the 

 application of their own pollen ; and Darwiu has con- 

 clusively shown that the progeny of self- fertilised 

 flowers possess less vigour than the parent plant and 

 are more susceptible of disease, and in those plants 

 that have many seeds the number produced is very 

 much smaller. 



The loss of vigour, unless watched for in the young 

 coffee plants, would be at first very difficult to as- 

 certain and would easily pise unnoticed, but the 

 coffee would be steadily fitting itself more each gener- 

 ation for the recipience of any disease. We have no 

 reason to doubt that the spores of hemihia vaslatrix 

 havealw.ays been present though in inappreciable quant- 

 itie.?, and thus it might be some time before a spore 

 would chance to be blown upon a plant that had 

 arrived at that stage when it becomes a suitable 

 host and then the production of fresh and numer- 

 ous spores would naturally be rapid. It was as far 

 as I know on a young cle.iring, or at least on an 

 estate of no great age where hrmileia vaslatrix 

 first declared itself, though I believe it must huve 

 shown in several places about the same time as other 

 clearings would offer the same facilities for its develop- 

 ment, and once fairly started the rapidity of its 

 increase would be very great for a variety of reasons, 

 from the immense numbers of spm'es that would now 

 be set free to commence their b.anefnl progress, com- 

 pared with what had previously been in existence, and 

 from the quantity of hand injudiciously selected and 

 opened, and not suited for coffee cultiv:itiou, where 

 disease would readily find a home, and subsequently 

 arrive at such .an overwhelming foree that coffee gener- 

 ally is attacked. Leaf-disease having thus established 

 itself, what is more natural than that it should be 

 followed by other ills. Let us take, for instance, 

 grulD, adopting the decayed root theory. We all know 



