Feb. I, 1887.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



53^ 



growth. It would give me great satisfaction, if 

 my endeavours for the supply in the Colonies with 

 coffee grounds as fertihzing substitutes shall bring 

 me in a beneficial connexion again with your 

 fine island, the connexion with which will always 

 be considered by me as a source of life and in- 

 telligence.— S. Bensinger. 



London, 20th December, 1886. 

 When intelligence of the deplorable effects of leaf 

 disease and parasitical dama-e had been received 

 Bome years ago, it was already tried by those 

 interested in the growing of the valuable produce, 

 coffee, to find out a remedy by which the weak- 

 ened condition of the estates could be ameliorated. 

 The continued deficiencies in the crops and their 

 confining influence on trade now more sternly urge 

 that means have to be found to restore the cul- 

 ture to its former healthy state and appearance, 

 supplying it at moderate expenses with manuring 

 matter, collected in the consuming countries 

 and supplying it to those fields, where the indis- 

 pensable fructiferous nourishment cannot sufficiently 

 be derived from the soil. 



It is obvious that the impoverishment of the 

 coffee soil, which its alternate owners more or 

 less caused by exhaustion of its properties, cannot 

 be continued without proving still more fatal, and 

 it is intended herewith to draw attention to that 

 stuff, which, (after the roasted beans having been 

 made use of for the preparation of the favorite 

 stimulating drink)— becomes unfit for direct food- 

 giving, but still possesses a great deal of reproductive 

 qualities, hardly contained in any other fructi- 

 fying application. 



It will be understood, that it is not meant to 

 promote forcibly the growth of the trees direct 

 and solely by the material, a proceeding which 

 was to be regarded not less offensive to produc- 

 tion as the alluded exaction. It is left to the 

 discernment of the planters to deeide when 

 and how those grounds may be applied as 

 a manure, and if properly used they will prove 

 a "merestone" in the coffee cultivation, by which 

 future enterprises will find a hold especially in 

 those tracts of ancient producing countries, where 

 in the last decennium such great disappointment 

 had to be endured for want of such means. Where 

 the mischief has gone too far, the reposition of 

 the fields with a lighter culture and with strength- 

 ening the ground for the later re-production of the 

 coffee berry will be the mode applied with most suc- 

 cess. Wherever the state of culture has not been too 

 much affected and injured, the introduction of the 

 sediment of coffee in its natural or prepared quality as 

 a manure besides those being already in use, will surely 

 repay its cost and when properly applied, it will 

 not only store nourishment for the trees own 

 requirements, but also support and restrain its 

 parasite and nibbling enemies, rats, insects, etc., to 

 which in its weak and unprotected state the 

 plants could off'er no resistance. 



It may be hoped that the parties most nearly in- 

 terested with the cultivation of coffee will consider 

 the value, the great manuring strength and re- 

 productive power to be derived from those many 

 hundred thousands hundred-weights of coffee 

 grounds obtainable every year and make use of 

 them to the best advantage of their plantations. 



S. Bensinger. 

 Analytic composition of dry coffee grounds. 

 Organic matter 91^ 54 



containing: Nitrogen 2-25* 



Mineral matter 

 containing : 



Sihca -10 



Phosphate of Lime '42 



* Equal to Ammonia 2'73, 



Carbonate of Lime "23 



Alkalies and Magnesia 'Tl 



1 46 

 100 



" NEW GALWAY " DISTEIGT REVISITED : 



Coffee — Tea — Cinchona — Wattles — Hakgala, 

 The name being derived from Ireland,— (a Scotch- 

 man suggested it in compihng the " Ceylon Direc- 

 tory" for 1875 in honour of the Irish Governor, 

 Sir Wm. Gregory,) — something in the nature of a 

 bull is permissible, and as a matter of fact we 

 could not revisit "New Galway," as that desig- 

 nation was not given to the group of estates of 

 which The Ambawella Valley is the centre and 

 the grand Hakgalla mountain the presiding mon- 

 arch, until many years subsequent to our 

 original visit in 18G5 (22 years ago). We went 

 under the auspices of good old Mark Kellow, a 

 "Cornish" boy, true to the traditions of the 

 twenty thousand who in the reign of James the 

 Seventh were determined, if a Trelawney was to 

 die, that they should "know the reason why." 

 Mr. Kellow saw no reason why he should not 

 open a coffee estate in the Ambawella Valley and 

 call it "New Cornwall." The compiler of Fer- 

 guson's Ceylon Directory was surely as heedless 

 of geography as the characters in "The Jackdaw 

 of Rheims" were of grammar, when he included 

 "New Cornwall" and "Warwick" in "New Galway." 

 But "what's in a name?" as Shakespeare, (who • 

 by the way knew something of Warwick,) made 

 one of his characters pertinently ask, especially 

 when those chiefly interested take kindly to that 

 name ? Of one thing there can be no doubt : that 

 the scenery and productions of "New Galway" as 

 closely resemble what is to be seen on the ocean 

 shores of old Galway, as they do the cliff's of 

 Cornwall and the battlements of the castle of 

 Guy of Warwick and their Tegetation. It is a 

 pleasant characteristic of the British race, Celtic 

 as well as Saxon, to revive, in the far-off scenes 

 of their migration and sojourn, names associated 

 with pleasant remembrances of the old country, 

 with "its white cliffs, its "brown heath and 

 shaggy wood," its fat pasture and exquisitely 

 beautiful green sward, dotted with buttercups 

 and daisies, and though last not least its 

 dear old lanes, shaded by elms and brightened 

 by hawthorn, woodbine and wild-rose. The trad- 

 itions and the associations connected with the im- 

 ported names given to estates in Ceylon, traverse 

 the whole domain of the history and topography 

 of the British Is'es, " from the Land's End to John 

 O' Groats,— and more especially Aberdeenshire and 

 the Channel Islands, with their contrasted dialects 

 of most ancient Saxon and Norman French patois 

 respectively. [Of course EngUsh is spoken by one 

 here and there even in "Aberdeen Awa," and since 

 Victor Hugo's enforced residence in the Channel 

 Islands, some of the inhabitants have learned pure 

 French,— as pure as a language can be in which the 

 people " call their mothers mares and their sisters 

 fillies." N.B.— This note is meant to be concilia- 

 tory, but, of course it will give great offence to 

 people who believe they speak the best English and 

 the best French in the world. The best English 

 and the best Gaelic (which is really the best French) 

 are, of course, spoken at Inverness and the adjacent 

 northern parts of Iloss-shire !J 



But " to return to our muttons " as the eminently 

 pastoral French say and to our visit to the 

 Ambawella Valley in 18G5. En route from Nuwara 

 Eliya we then called in at the scene, below the 

 1,500 feet sheer precipice of Hakgala (the jaw 

 mountain,) which, from the resemblance of the 

 licmate and country to whp-t he had seen and ex. 



