December r, 1883.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 



4'5 



up carefully and planted out carefully. You can 

 damage them easily euough, when allowed to gro^ 

 too old and roughly pulled out of the hard soil ; 

 unless the tap root be quite straight, it will split 

 and naturally become unhealthy. If, assisted with a 

 fork or cro.vbar, properly pruned and put out, for 

 hardiness and general qualily no nursery plant will 

 equal it. No: " L. B. Y. L." you are out of it when 

 you blame these causes as the source of the present 

 unhealthy condition of our coffee tree. 



Cinchona. — 1 liriow not the cause of your death. 

 Tea.— I must learn more of it ere I speak. 

 I have tried a good many, but I did not always 

 find the largest seed the best. 



We are making a bia leap now. But, remember, 

 TaEMORK you LOOK THE LESS YOU LIKE IT. 



INDIAN VERSITS CEYLON TEA SEED. 

 Dimbula, 22nd October 188.3. 



Dear Sir. — Mr. Hay is quite right in advising plant- 

 ers to plant /)i(/ia» sied. Every Assam planter I have 

 asked ridiculed the idea of the advantage of country 

 seed. Not only is it inferior jilt, but in 99 cases 

 out of 100 the seed sold is unripe, and many of the 

 resulting plants misex-able abortions. I planted both 

 kinds in my nurseries last year. The I.-jdian seed 

 plants (Amluckie Tea Co.'s), containing 19,000 seeds 

 to the maund, were ready to plant out in June, 

 and !iavc all been planted, while the country -grown 

 seed plants are still struggling for existence in the 

 nurseries. — Yours truly, PLANTER. 



[There can bo no question as lo the advantage of 

 obtaining the best possible seed ; and carefully gathered, 

 ripe-seed of superior jat from India, well packed and 

 rapidly transmitted and put into the ground, ougbtto give 

 such tirst-rate results as our correspondent obtained 

 from the Amluckie Co.'s seed which he advertises in 

 the best possible manner. But it Ceylon-giown seed 

 from best Indian jat ought not to be used in Cevlon, 

 in the first generation, does it not logically follow 

 that Assam-grown seed from trees of perhaps the 

 fourth geniration ought long ago to have been aban- 

 doned for growing in Assam ? Probably the solution 

 of the difficulty would be an e.\change of seed ; al- 

 though no doubt Assam planters would laugh con- 

 svmiediy at the idea of Ceylon sending t/iem tea seed. 

 For those who would palm off bad jat sfed for good, 

 or supply unripe seed, we have only nords of con- 

 demuacion ; but there h good jat tea in Ceylon, the 

 property of pliateis who, if poor, are honest. We 

 see no occasion, therefore, for eo sweeping a condemn- 

 ation of Ceylon seed, unfortunate (the reverse of 

 Am— luckic) as oar correspondent's exijcrience seems 

 to have been. We hare no personal interest in the 

 matter of the sale of Ceylon-grown teeed, for numerous 

 applications for need from Abbotefonl have b^m uni- 

 fonnlf refu3:d. All that the 7 to 9 year old seed-bearers 

 from Assam Company seed can produce is used to extend 

 cultivation on the estate. So much is this the case, 

 that, for a low-country place, we have had t" purchase 

 first Indian tea seed nnd then locally grown. We 

 quite agree that the very best Indian tea seed is 

 better, just because it comes from a different soil and 

 climate. We only protest against the sweeping con- 

 demnation of local seed, even if grown from the best 

 Indian j.at. Since the above was written we have 

 ee?n lelteis from the late Mr. Cameron ordering first 

 100 maunds and then 25 of seed locally grown on 

 busbts, the result of good jat seed from India. He 

 also expressed his opinion as t3 small-sized seeds 

 thus ;— " I have tried t!!e seed and find it very good, 90 

 per cent of it sound. It is no drawback at all to seed, 

 to be mixed with small, for, as a rule, sui.all seeds 

 come up as well as larg>, and often make better 

 plants. It is a well-known fact that eome very small 



seed is often got from pure indigenous tea trees. ' 

 It is an equally well-known fact, we believe, that 

 inferior China plants often produce very largo 

 seeds. The point, however, is that Mr. Cameron, who 

 certainl}' knew something about tea cultivation, had 

 no hesitation in recommeading Ceylon-grown tea seed 

 to his constituents. — Ed.] 



CACAO AND COCONUT CULTIVATION. 



Kalugala, Kcgalla, 22nd Oct. 1>;S.3. 



Deak Sirs, — Seeing the valuable contribution in 

 your paper, "Cacao Cultivation in Ceylon, " it reminds 

 me that some five years ago 1 planted as an experi- 

 ment in a coconut garden in the low-country some 

 cacao plants — quincnnxed with the coconuts. Revisit- 

 ing the spot some littlfl time ago, I found the plants 

 had grown into strong and healthy trees, and were 

 crowded with fruit 



Again, passing lately along the road from Dolosbage to 

 Kegalla, I was shown some cacao trees in a coconut 

 garden planted exactly in the same way, and which were 

 to all appearances llourishing and b aring well. 



In neither instance, I learned, had the cacao trees 

 received any extra attention, and had never been 

 manured. The soils in both gardens were an ordinary 

 red loam. 



I mention these facts in the hope that those poss- 

 essing coconut estates and gardens, with suitable soils, 

 would be induced to go in (experimentally at least) 

 for the cultivation of cacao amongst their coconuts. 



The cacao, being a deep fe-i'der, requires a freeand fair- 

 ly good soil, and, receiving shelter and checkered shade 

 from the coconuts, would, in my opinion, have all that 

 it needs. — I am, yours faithfully, 



G. W. F. SAULIERE. 



POOR OLD "KING COFKEE" IN HIS OWN 

 DEFENCE. 



23rd October 1883. 



Dear Sir, — You don't know perhaps that I also 

 was at the Dimbula planters' meeting, not in my 

 shroud as some planters in Dikoya, notably Mr. 

 Skrine, would put me, but in my kingly robes was I 

 there. I had firm hopes that Messrs. Elphinslone, 

 Sinclair and Lawrance would have defended me, but 

 even these could not agree as to my ailments. So, I 

 now whisper to you, and leave you to ni.ake it known 

 to all planters {a) that I am the medium through 

 which Providence punishes the planters ; (b) that leaf- 

 disease and grub are the main causes of the failure of 

 coffee crops in Dimbula and Lindula during the past 

 four years, aggravated in many instances by no manur- 

 ing, no pruning, or insufficient pruning, and no ap- 

 plication of disinfectant. To those who bow to Pro- 

 vidence and wish to give me fair treatment, I would 

 strongly recommend (1) to give me a liberal supply 

 of sweet (not fungoid) manures, to prune me better 

 and earlier, and to seatter disinfectans all around 

 me which will counteract leaf-disease ; (2) to burn 

 the pat anas as early as po-sible, d'g holes, or 

 trenches, and mix manure with soil, put in hole 

 and cover well, then scatter wood-ash and lime over 

 the top, by which means you will destroy a lot of 

 grub, and prevent the beetle to come into your 

 coffee, their food near the ^urface (pconao, bones 

 and small rootlets) being covered over with soil, wood- 

 ash and lime ; (3) as I cannot stand cinchcna at all, but 

 do not mind tea, you must take out yo ir cinchona, 

 or I cannot live ; and (4) give me also some air-holes, 

 to allow my feeders to get fresh air and to let bad 

 gas out. II the planters will follow this my advice 

 in Lindula and Dimbula, which is a climate I 

 like, I will prove to them that I will be able to 



