Jan. I, 1887.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



503 



taken in hand, and not in the undertakings themselves 

 The latter may be everything that may be desired ; 

 the former may be all wrong- We have been told, 

 over and over again, that gold mining iu India will 

 not pay; that there is gold, but that the cost of 

 working will mote than eat up the money obtained 

 from the sale of the precious me'^al, and that only 

 milhouaires who can afford to lose money should 

 engage in the industry. Those who express this 

 view" of the case think only of the reckless manner 

 that companies went to work some years ago. Fine 

 houses were built for the Superintendents, co.^tly 

 machinery was brought out, and everything was con- 

 ducted on a most extravagant scale. The result might 

 have been seen from the beginning— the ruin of 

 many of the shareholders, and the collapse of the 

 whole undertaking. If gold could be dug up in the 

 same way as potatoes, it might be made to cost more 

 than it could be sold for. Hut, when economically 

 worked, there is no reason why the gold industry 

 ehould not pay. The shareholders have learnt a lesson 

 from previous failures, and they are doing now what 

 they ought to have done before— working the mines in a 

 sensible manner. Gold ha-, not yet had a fair trial 

 in this country, and it cannot be declared a failure 

 till it has. In the next place, we have the coffee 

 industry, and we are often told that it has gone to the 

 dogs, wherever the abode of those animals may be. 

 We are, however, of a different opinion, and believe 

 that the industry, if properly taken in hand, will pay 

 and pay well. The price of the berry is going up. 

 and, in a short time, it may touch a hundred rupees. 

 We will not undertake to say that the large fortunes; 

 that were made in former years can be matle now 

 but we hold — and with reason— that a fair amount 

 can be obtained from the cultivation of the coffee- 

 plant. If we ask the reason why so many have failed 

 who went into the industry, we shall be told that 

 leaf-disease, the borer, low prices, &c., have been the 

 cause of the mischief, and we are willing to make 

 all allowance for them. But we must not stop here. 

 There are other causes, and we will give them. In 

 the first place, men often engage in the industry who 

 cannot tell a coffee tree from a rose bush, they and 

 their friends are of opinion that no special knowledge 

 is required ; that a nnn has only to take up a piece 

 of land, plant the trees, and enjoy fhe proceeds of 

 the undertaking. Sir M. E.Grant Duff in his '' Review 

 Minute " gives an instance of the way young men 

 '•go into" coffee, and we have heard of many cases 

 like it. It is hardly the correct thing to lay the 

 blame on coffee when the fault lies in altogether 

 another direction. Then, again, men commence cotfee- 

 p]ant:inij without capital, or with very little, aitd the 

 intere^t on the capital eats up the whole profit. 

 Sooner or latter such men come to grief, and the 

 blame is luid on the industry — very erroneouslj', it 

 must be said. Capital is required iu this industrj' as 

 well as in others ; it is also ref|uired that it should 

 be judiciously employed, atid if these two necessary con- 

 ditions are neglected, it is unreasonable to expect that 

 coffee-pl nting should pay. No other industry wiiuld 

 pay under the circumstaices, and yet people wonder 

 that planters — or rather so-called planters — fail. P.ut we 

 have not yet come to the end of the list of the evils 

 th*t are adverse to coffee. Some of the planters are 

 absentees. As soon «s they have raised a good crop 

 they take a trip to England, and there spend the money 

 that they ought to have laid out on their estates. 

 They have to leave their estates in the charge of 

 others, and when they return they find them much 

 in the same state as Solomon described the garden 

 of the sluggard — the weeds higher than the trees, and 

 the whole having a most dilapidated, out-at-elbow 

 appearance. It is well known by all engaged in coffee 

 that an estate re(juires the most attention the year 

 after a good crop has bi en raised, and the neglect 

 of this has been the ruin of many a planter. Then, 

 again, the owners of estates -or some of them — 

 too often leaves them in charge of overseers, while 

 they enjoy themselves at the nearest large station. 

 We have heard it said that the Ootacamund Club 

 alls had more to do with getting coffee in the Nil- 



.- L. 



giris a bad name than the leaf-disease ; and though 

 there is exaggeration in this, it is not without truth. 

 The estates are left during the absence of the owners 

 in the charge of those who, too often, neglect them. 

 When the master is away enjoying himself, the ser- 

 vant see, no reason why he should not follow suit, 

 and this he does to the detriment of the property. 

 Till these mistakes have been remedied, it is wrong 

 to talk so much about the failure of coffee. The 

 old planters lived in a very different style from 

 their successors, and they succeeded and did not 

 complain- Their houses were not the palatial edifices 

 that are to be found here, and there in the planting 

 districts, neither did they think it their duty to be 

 always running home. They lived in the plainest 

 style ; dressed in the homeliest manner, and the 

 consequence was— they made money. If the planters 

 of the present day were to follow their example 

 their rupees would be more and their complaints less.— 

 Jfadnis Standard. 



Aloe Fibre Kope.— We have been shown a sample 

 of rope made by hand from the fibre of the ordi- 

 nary aloe. The rope appeari to be very strong and 

 close, much more close than rope made from the 

 fibre of the New Zealand flax. If rope of equal quality 

 to that shown us can be turned out in any quantity, 

 there should be another enterprise open to those who 

 wish to see colonial produce utilisod.— iVa/r/^ Witnen. 

 Ringing Fruit Trees.— The eft'ect of ringing fruit 

 trees is a question of the flow and return of the sap. 

 If the branch i.s ringed below the fruit spur, the re- 

 sult will be that the fruit will attain extraordinary 

 size, and that the ripening will be accelerated. Some 

 of the peach growers at Montreuil, near Paris, have 

 practised ringing for some years; but they do not 

 publish their secrets.— T. Francis Rivers (Sawbridg- 

 worth). — Field. 



Coconut Oil.— Veyangoda, 7fch January, 1887.— My 

 idea always was that the chief cause of the dis- 

 parity in price between Ceylon and Cochin Oil was 

 in the colour. I remember reading years ago in the 

 pages of the Ohscrvei; that some one interested in 

 Oil did enquire per.sonally as to the low price his 

 Oil fetched, and was told that ii was owing to its 

 colour. All that could be done in the Colombo Milk 

 with the wretchedly discoloured Oopperah they press, 

 is to clarify it. The colour of the Oil they cannot 

 change. Tiie remedy is in the hands of the Mill- 

 owners. If they make a stand against purchasing 

 discoloured Copperah, or pay, as a discouragement to 

 careless manufacture, low prices for it, it will be to 

 the interest of the Natives to bestow more care in 

 drying their Coconuts. The Mill-owners might also 

 press clean and dirty Copperah separately and classify 

 their oil. If better prices were obtainable for clear 

 Copperah, Estate proprietors and lessees of largo 

 Estates will devise means to dry their Coconuts, even 

 in wet weather, without contact with tire and smoke' 

 As it is, they sell their crops to regular dealers, who, 

 even in the best weather, resort to fires under lathed 

 platforms to dry the nuts, owing to a belief they 

 have that smoke and fire-dried Copperah is hearier 

 than that dried in the sun, and because the more 

 tardy and expensive process of sun-drying does not 

 give them appreciably better price.?. If such a de- 

 licate article as Tea is dried by heated air from a 

 furnace, it will not require much inventive skill in 

 Coconut planters, to devise a sheet iron room with 

 a furnace underneath to dry their nuts ; but, as I 

 said before, there is no inducement for it. It pays 

 better to sell our nuts on the spot. There is a great 

 deal in your surmise that the Oil from immature 

 nuts may account for paucity of stearine. It is notori- 

 ous that small landholders do not wait till their nuts 

 are mature to pick them. One reason is that if they 

 do, thieves will be before them. I wocder whether, 

 if Sir Arthur (Tordon receives as many petitions from 

 owners of (.'oconut land as he said he received from 

 owners of Arecanut plantations, to protect their pro- 

 duce, he will next year insert Coconuts amongst the 

 otlier product.s, in the clause, to possess which is fkH 

 offence !— Local " Examiner." 



