424 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[Dec. I, 1886. 



tended under the influence of present cheapness, 

 will again bring about such a condition of the 

 market for the raw bark as shall enable its cultiv- 

 ation to become once more nrotitablc. 



" That view has been strengthened by com- 

 munications we have had with authorities at 

 home. We have all seen how whole fields- 

 whole estates we may say— wliich formerly grew 

 little else but coffee have been transformed 

 bodily into tea-gardens. It is perhaps due to a 

 considerable extent to the consignments falling off in 

 the Eastern exports of the berry, that prices are 

 once again rismg largely in Mincing Lane. It is not 

 Ceylon alone, it should be remembered, which has 

 had the prosperity of its coffee industry checked 

 by that potent enemy leaf-disease. There is scarcely 

 a coffee-growing country in the world which has 

 not been more or iess a sufferer from the same 

 cause as has affected Ceylon. The adjacent con- 

 tinent, .lava, Fiji and many other countries, have 

 had to regret the presence of the disease and its 

 results to their prosperity. But comparatively a 

 few years have passed and we have before us the 

 consequence of a reduced outturn in improved 

 prices, prices which may well induce Ceylon planters, 

 now that there are evidences that the effect of 

 the fungus is weakening, to pause before they 

 further denude their lands of the coffee bush, and 

 revert to that wide acreage of a single product to 

 which, we believe, we may in great measure at- 

 tribute the birth of the disease on our estates. 

 There is no reason to conclude that the perpe- 

 tuation of such a system with regard to tea will 

 be never free from its natural consequences than 

 has proved to be the case with coffee, and although 

 Dr. Trimen, when speaking at the Ceylon Dinner 

 lately held in London, declared it to be impossible 

 that the present form of leaf-disease which has 

 proved to be so disastrous to coffee should attack 

 tea, we have no assurance that some other form 

 of pest may not be bred should we revert to our 

 former mistake of devoting our lands wholly, or 

 nearly wholly, to a single form of cultivation. 



" Into this error we at home observe a disposition 

 to fall ; and we may, therefore, add our note of 

 warning to that already given by yourselves and 

 some of your local correspondents. We believe 

 that some Ceylon planters already fully recognize 

 that the impetuous clearing out of coffee is being 

 carried too far. The Uva Estates Companies 

 seem to be strongly alive to the danger of acting 

 too precipitately in this direction, and they have 

 determined to proceed henceforth with very great 

 caution. Their directors are observant of the in- 

 creasing rates for their coffee produce arising 

 from the diminished supplies of its higher classes, 

 and they now make a judicious selection of those 

 fields wherever the symptoms of returning health to 

 the coffee are most manifest, and retain them 

 under the same conditions of careful and high 

 qultivation as were formerly practised with respect 

 to them. We counsel that such an example should, 

 as far as may be possible, be generally followed, 

 not with respect to coffee alone, but also as re- 

 gards cinchona. It should be borne in mind 

 with respect to the latter that the presence of 

 cinchona trees on estates affords advantages alto- 

 gether independent of the pecuniary value of tlicir 

 bark, and to sacrifice these by neglecting the 

 further planting of the tree, would, it seem to us, 

 be highly injudicious. Our experience of the 

 markets for colonial produce has fully satisfied us 

 that no single form of it has ever become 

 so permanently reduced in price as to nullify all 

 hope of future profitable cultivation. The markets 

 follow of course the natural law attending supply 

 and demand. Seasons of depression in prices, if 



this be long continued, cause decrease in pro- 

 duction, and as the result, prices again rise to 

 their normal level. Now this is what we see at 

 the present time taking place with regard to 

 coffee, and we believe the same result will as 

 surely follow with respect to cinchona. The pre- 

 sent favourable prices obtained for Ceylon tea 

 will almost as certainly experience reaction due 

 to its large production, present and prospective, 

 and it may be, therefore, that the day will come 

 — if the present course of wholesale denudation 

 of coffee and cinchona be persisted in, — when 

 your planters will strongly regret the total aban- 

 donment of those other forms of cultivation which 

 have until lately appeared almost hopeless as to 

 their yielding a satisfactory return. We should 

 recollect the outcry in which all shared when 

 misfortune overtook Ceylon as to the impolicy of 

 treating all your eggs in one basket. Are you not 

 tending once again in that mistaken direction ? 

 We fear that your are, and that the future will again 

 force regret for doing so upon us. Beading the 

 signs of the times, and warned by past ex- 

 perience, we would counsel less haste in the 

 abandonment of coff'ee and cinchona cultivation 

 than at present seems to find faveur among the 

 greater proportion of your Planting Community." 

 4 



Amount of Quinine m Cinchona Trees. — The 

 late Mr. Howard found that the amount of quinine 

 varied largely in trees of the same species growing iu 

 the same locality. High-class barks should aloue 

 be cultivated.-TGiar<^e«ers' Chronicle. 



The Drying and Withering. — Referring to 

 the work of the patent " Dessicator," a well-known 

 planter writes that with reference to his withering he 

 feels almost independent of the weather, now that 

 he has got a "Brown's Dessicator" as his Drier. 

 When the weather is unfavourable for withering, 

 he simply conducts the hot air from the " Dessi- 

 cator " to the withering room, and by that means 

 he lias the withering under his control with, as 

 he thinks, a very satisfactory result. He adds : — 

 " I lind that in weather that would otherwise 

 take two or three days to wither leaf, I can have 

 the day's leaf ready, and well withered the fol- 

 lowing morning by keeping the fan going all night 

 to raising the Dessicator heat, to say 230^ to '250°." 



Demand for Mica in Canada. — We have a 

 letter from Toronto from an ex-Ceylon resident 

 who says, he (along with a fellow-townsman, a 

 former Kandy Banker) is interested in learning 

 all about the mica procurable in the island. He en- 

 closes a specimen which is liner and clearer than 

 the best we have yet seen in Ceylon. Of good 

 quality our correspondent says a large quantity 

 can be sold in America, but he has to learn that 

 there have been several here collecting and buy- 

 ing before him for the London market, whence 

 doubtless it is widely distributed. We shall be ready 

 to give the address of our Toronto correspondent to 

 any mica collector who may wish to try Canada 

 with a parcel. 



iNOA PuLCHERHiMA. — A small plant of this novel 

 South American plant^a recently struck cuttiuj; — is 

 now in flower at the Royal Exotic Nur.-^eries, Chelsea. 

 It is quite a tiny plant, but it h;is thrown cue cluster 

 of erect long crUuson-coloured stamens. JNlr- Court 

 states that he has had the pluut under bis oare at 

 the above nurseries for the space of twenty-three 

 years, but has never previously succeeded in flower- 

 ing it, though he had seen fine spiximens of it in 

 Mexico, 6 to 8 feet in height, and covered with 

 clusters of flowers. It is there cultivated as an ordi- 

 nary greenhouse plant, placed out-of-doors during 

 the .'•uininer, but housed during the winter. The 

 cutting — now a blooming plant — was taken only in 

 August last, and it was bloomed in the pot in wliich 

 it was rooted. — Gardemrg' Chronicle, 



