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THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST* \]vm i, t 



over the flushes. Already in the low and 

 medium districts, planters have been crying out 

 ' hold, enough' to the tea-flushes, which many 

 of them have scarcely been able to over- 

 take witli their supply of plucking hands. Labour 

 seems to be the only ticklish question in connec- 

 tion with the future of our great tea industry 

 and even here, light is now breaking in from 

 several sides ; for, besides that coolies are re- 

 ported to be coming in from the Coast far more 

 freely than in previous years, in quite a number 

 of districts, Sinhalese are coming to the rescue and 

 showing themselves very ready to earn the tea- 

 planters' money. Extra pay too in the busy flushing 

 season is sure to be popular and must speedily 

 attract the poor people of Southern India in large 

 numbers. The difliculty of getting Tea machinery 

 supplied and erected in time is said to be 

 bothering the planters this season : every machinist 

 in tlie island is reported to be as busy as he can be, 

 while agents for home firms have also plenty of 

 orders ; and no wonder with the large area of tea 

 coming into bearing erelong throughout the island. 

 New life has also been put into other staples. The 

 high prices for coft'ee,— middling plantation Ceylon 

 being reported from London at 100s per cwt.— have 

 cheered planters with our old staple still on their es- 

 tates, very greatly. This is especially the case in the 

 Bogawantalawa and Agrapatana divisions of Dik- 

 oya and Dimbula, in Udapussellawa, and all through 

 Uva. The greatest possible attention will now be 

 paid to good coffee and every eft'ort made to ar- 

 rest any signs of the new visitant green bug. As 

 for the leaf fungus, it is scarcely, if at all, 

 heard of now-a-days, and even the native coffee 

 along roadsides which for years has done noth- 

 ing in crops, is this season reported to be 

 improving and shewing berries. Cacao planters 

 are much cheered by the good prices of their 

 product "cocoa," no doubt caused by the antici- 

 pated great scarcity of coffee— a circumstance which 

 may .well be expected to benefit tea, since if there 

 is no coffee to drink, tea as well as well as 

 cocoa must be taken to as substitutes. 



CEYLON UPCOUNTEY PLANTING REPORT. 



HOW TO MAKE TEA PAT — TRANSPLANTER— TEA PRUNING 

 FLUSHES G.VLORE. 



23rd May, 1887. 



In a late number of the Indian Planter.^' Gazette 

 there is a communicated article on " How to make 

 tea pay." The writer is treating of "plucking," 

 and the following little extract may perhaps in 

 part explain why so many Indian tea gardens lose 

 money for their proprietors :— " A little rum goes 

 a long way : it is well to celebrate the beginning 

 of the season by giving the pluckers the first 

 day a glass of rum each, and say a bottle to 

 the nirdar" ! We don^t all think alike, but it 

 seems to me that the writer of the article 

 has a good deal to learn. I fancy this "rum" 

 dodge of making tea pay, has never occurred to 

 even the most nnaginative mind in Ceylon, and 

 I trust it never will. 



It is like harking back to something old re- 

 ferring to the transplanter of Mr. Scoweu. But 

 it is a tool which only requires to be used, to 

 know its value and it is but lately I have taken 

 to use it. I had it highly recommended to me 

 and during the rains in April I put out with 

 that tool as a trial about .500 tea plants as sup- 

 phes a day or two after the dry weather set in, 

 and there was more than a fortnight of it. The 

 plants were left without any shade, and with the 

 exception of two or three, they stood as well as 

 If they had never been taken from the aursery. 



Those that failed were evidently damaged in some 

 way independent of the transplanting. For Sup- 

 plying, it evidently means certainty, that anyhow 

 was the character I got of the work by one who 

 used it all last season. The coolies get very expert 

 in handling it, after working with it for a very 

 short time and from 800 to 1,200 plants can be 

 taken out in a day. The carrying out is where 

 the expense is, but if the estate nurseries be at all 

 central, even that does not cost so very much when 

 it is remembered that the work once done, has not 

 to be done again. 



About tea pruning there is much to be learned. 

 How often a bush should get the knife, and where, 

 are questions which will be undecided for a long 

 time. It looks like as if a yearly pruning were 

 much too often, when you hear that " Rookwood " 

 has not been pruned for two years, and they are 

 getting over 800 lb. an acre now. 



A visitor to the Kelani Valley was telling me 

 of the wonderful character of the tea flushes 

 lately to be seen there, and the more extra- 

 ordinary ones of which he heard. I don't care 

 to give the average pluckings — figures you gave 

 as extraordinary the other day are nowhere 

 near them — besides it might set every other district 

 " envying and grieving," but they were piled on 

 till at last the visitor was forced to suggest a 

 new system of measuring, which he had often 

 to adopt himself, he said, especially in a rush. He 

 gave the wrinkle to a man who had not been able 

 to get round half his place in a week, and the 

 growth was so rapid that he had always had a diffi- 

 culty in saying where the former day's work had 

 ended ! " Try our plan " said the visitor " give 

 your pluckers grass knives, stack the leaf, and 

 measure and pay for it like firewood" ! 1 The visitor 

 came from one of the old districts, the fame and 

 knowledge of the ways of which had evidently never 

 reached the benighted Valley of Kelani. There 

 should be no flushes lost there in the future, and 

 their Labour Difliculty ought to vanish. 



The monsoon rains seem to be fairly in, and 

 Planting will soon be in full swing. 



Peppercorn. 



THE PRICE OF COFFEE. 



Nearly a year ago the American Grocer gave it as its 

 opinion that Brazil had already reached its maximum 

 of production, a bold prophecy, truly, concerning a 

 country of 3,300,000 square miles, or nearly as large as 

 Europe, having a large proportion of its area still 

 virgin forest, and a population of little more than 4en 

 millions, including rather over a million slaves. Still, 

 there are many things which seem to support the idea 

 gathered by the American Grocer. Coffee planting in 

 Brazil cannot be considered a success so far as the 

 planters themselves are concerned when in the Pro- 

 vinces of Rio Janeiro, Unias, S. Pauls, and Espirito 

 S into nearly nineteen-twentiethe of the plantations are 

 iii.irtijaged. Nor can low prices be pointed to as the 

 causo of this state of things, most of the mortgages 

 being of over twenty years standing, a magnificent fact 

 when wfc recollect the price of coffee prior to the last 

 few years of depression. The emancipation of slares 

 has equally little to do with the planter's embarrass- 

 ments, as the law of free birth only came into force in 

 1871, and though it was estimated two years ago that 

 the whole of the slaves in Brazil would be free by 1895, 

 there have been few complaints of the great damages 

 which it was at one time expected would be done to 

 the coffee industry by emancipation. At the .same time, 

 if Brazilian planters, from whatever causes, could not 

 keep out of difficulties when they had slave labour, 

 it is unlikely that they will be able to do so without 

 it, so that, on this account alone, it does not seem as 

 if coffee cultivation will be extended, either by the 

 original planters or by fresh settlers. Vast as the forests 

 of Brazil are, they must remain practically untouched 



