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THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



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[Feb. I, 1887, 



■^■B^B M^ — M ^^W^— ^^i^M^ lMMWBaaBBiaai— BBS 



I find my coffee costs me within a fraction of 

 20s per tierce from the time it is thrown into the 

 piilper loft to. the time it is ready for the tierce ; the 

 tierce costs (inchiding nails) 5s ; cartage to railway 13 

 miles off, 10s ; and the railway freight at 22s 7d per ton 

 (gross), another lOs making a total for pulping, drying, 

 grinding, fanning , sizing, hand-picking, tiercing and 

 sending to the Wharf at Kingston of 45s per tierce of 

 850 lb. 



All the weeding is done by tasks, which vary from 

 » to 8 or 9 rows for a shilling; the rows are comited from 

 the head of the acre, thus : — 



The prunintr is done by task at an average cost of 59 

 per acre. The management consists of a manager 

 (Busha,* he is called by the natives) three rangers or 

 headmen and myself. The climate is an excellent one, 

 the mean temperature being 79 ' in the shade. All the 

 flowers and most of the vegetables of Europe grow 

 readily. There is plenty of fine timber still left such 

 as cedar, bullet tree, mastic, bloodwood and bitter- 

 wood, the latter an excellent wood for indoor work as 

 no insects will attack it and one nil)ble is quite enough 

 for our friends, the rats. Mandeville, the nearest post- 

 town and principal place in these mountains, is a charm- 

 ing spot very much like an Eaglish village. Church, 

 school, stores all round the green^ there are fine Muni- 

 cipal offices too, a good stone Court House, a Consta- 

 bulary Barrack, &c., and a Post and Telegraph Office. 

 The post is tri-weekly, eastward and westward alternate 

 days and a fortnightly packet. Mandeville has become 

 quite a fashionable health resort, every year an increas- 

 ing number of Europeans and Americans come for the 

 winter. There are Club, Lawn Tennis and Cricket Clubs 

 and a Race course and the roads are excellent. 



[The cost of work as shown by our correspondent 

 is not high ; but nothing is said about draining which 

 with a liability to 50 inches of rain a month (36 inches 

 in 2 or 3 days !) ought to be an important work. Coffee 

 yielding up to 3^ to 4 cwt. an acre is certainly not 

 heavy bearing, more especially as the prices differ so 

 widely from those paid for the famous " Blue Mountain 

 Coffee." Our correspondent should tell us something 

 about his Pimento cultivation and market. — Ed.] 



entered another, in company with Mr. H. C. Harrison 

 of Awisawella, for a Sifting and Sorting machine 

 to cost from E350 to E400 which ought to effect 

 a further marked saving in factory labour besides 

 Ee«uring better work. This is to be called "The 

 Elston Patent Tea Sifting Machine." 



Mr. Govt leares for England by the S. S. " India" 

 on Monday, Jany. 24, but he hopes to return erelong 

 to Ceylon in whieh as a tea country he has taken 

 so much interest, and with which, through his 

 patents and other circumstances, we trust he will, 

 in the future, become still more closely identified. 



PLANTING AND COFFEE IN JAMAICA. 



A gentleman who is pleased to give a very 

 high character for information and usefulness, to 

 our Tropical Agriculturist, affords some interesting 

 information respecting his experience past and pre- 

 sent as a coffee planter in Jamaica. He has, of 

 course, never been in Cejlon ; but his estimates 

 and mode of working will interest many of our 

 readers : — 



I have a coffee plantation here. Crops have been 

 poor for the last two years, only fiftyfour tierces 1885-6 

 and about the same this year, 1886-7. In 1884-5 we 

 made eighty tierces of 850 lb. each, not much of a 

 return, seeing I weed 180 acres and " bill out " several 

 patches of old coffee. 



I have just planted 60 acres of virgin woodland with 

 coffee, and found it no small undertaking. The prac- 

 tice in this part of the island (Manchester Hills) is to 

 give out the land to the Negros rent free for three 

 years, they undertaking to cut down and clean up and 

 get the land in order for lining and pegging; after the 

 pegging they are allowed to plant their provisions, 

 yams, bananas etc., and when the coffee is planted, 

 keep it free from weeds and give it up at the end of the 

 three years, quite clean. The fencing is done by the 

 Neg'ros and very well done too as the estate's horses, 

 mules and cattle would, if once they got into the 

 coffee piece, make short work of the provisions. 



I append the expenses of planting the 60 acres: — 

 Surveying, and planting pimento trees at 



the acre poles .,. ... „. £12 



Lining and pegging ... ... ... 7 6 lOJ 



Planting and pulling suckers ... ... 22 7 9 



Cutting pegs, making coffee lines &c. ,,. 5 13 



Making intervals (roads) ... .. 3 9 6 



£50 16 li 



Tiie trees are planted 6 feet apart and topped at 4' 6." 

 We are about 2,200 feet above the sea with a 

 normal rainfall of 80 inches. I have found it 

 considerably less till the last two vears, 1888 not 

 quite 10 inches ; 1884 mm ; 1885 80-06 ; and to the 

 end of October this year we have liad 142 inches 

 (nearly 50 of it fell in June, 36 inches between the 

 nth and 11th ) 



My coffee is fair plantation, the imlk of it realiz- 

 ing aboHt COs per cwt.; this year the peaberry sold 

 for 788. My separator (Gordon's) gave me 6 per cent 

 peaberry, the machinery is of the " old time " sort and 

 worked by mule-power 2, (there are no rivers in 

 this part of tlie island) and it has the advantage, ic 

 these times of low prices, of being inexpensive, I can 

 pnlp 60 boxes an hour, our box holds 96 quarts j we 

 calculate that 40 boxes of cherry give a tierce of good 

 Coffee plus the triage. 



The barbecues are a flight of 25 each, 40 feet 

 square. All my fields are quite a mile and-a-half from 

 the works, but I pick quite 80 per cent of my coffee 

 at Is a box and the balance at Is .Sd and Is 6d, the 

 rat coffee at 2s : the latter amounts to about 4 per 

 cent of the crop. Labor is plentiful enough. I manage 

 to weed the wliole of my fields in four weeks and 

 at a heavy ripening have had 250 hands in the fields 

 and have picked in over 400 boxes equal to 10 tierces 

 ill a week, that is up to Thursday afternoon. Quashie 

 objects to work on Friday ; they take that day for 

 working their own grounds a»d on Saturday they go 

 ^9 QiarBetf 



ON THE EMPLOYMENT OP THE SEDI- 

 MENT OF COFFEE FOR STRENGTHENING 

 THE PRODUCING POWER OF THE 



COFFEE TREES. 



A (xernian correspondent, formerly in Ceylon, 

 writing from London by a recent mail, propounds 

 rather an interesting idea in reference to the use 

 of coffee grounds for restoring fertility to coffee trees 

 and enough might be collected in Ceylon to try an 

 experiment. As a manure, a substance containing 

 2-73 per cent of ammonia, could not but be help- 

 ful, but phosphate of lime is low and no potash 

 is indicated. As an ordinary manure, we fear so 

 great a bulk of inert matter would scarcely pay 

 the cost of local carriage and application far less 

 its collection in Europe and transmission here, 

 Eut an experiment might be tried. Our correspond- 

 ent's letter is as follows: — 

 To the Editor, Ceylon Observer. 



I have the honor to submit for youi information 

 my ideas laid down in the enclosed treatise sug- 

 gesting reimportation and the use of coffee grounds 

 for the amelioration and the restitution of the coffee 



