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oil may be made as bright and colourless, and when 

 newly drawn almost as scentless as iiltered water. 

 The colour and most probably the disagreeable 

 smell are entirely due to bad treatment. Many of 

 the villagers gather unripe nuts and pay very little 

 attention to the drying of the copra ; they thus pro- 

 duce a dirty half-rotten copra that sells very low. 

 The Western Province estate proprietors almost to a 

 man sell their nuts to traders, who smoke the copra 

 when half-dry. The planters of the North-Western 

 Province enjoy dry weather during the greater part 

 of the year which enables them to dry their copra 

 with very little trouble and being a long way from 

 the mai^ket, it goes on drying in the boats even if 

 only partially dry when dispatched. This is the 

 cleanest, the driest, and consequently the highest- 

 priced copra, and if manufactured separately, would 

 probably yield an oil equal to Cochin, but it suits 

 the oil-maker's book to mix all the various 

 qualities of copra and make one uniform quality of 

 oil and the inferiority of our j^i'oduce in the 

 European markets is the result. 



When the villagers are not induced to take greater 

 care in the preparation of their copra by the rela- 

 tively low price they obtain, there is little hope of 

 reaching them in any other way, but the class that 

 own estates of 10 acres and upwards are, as a 

 rule, more intelligent and energetic, and generally 

 sufficiently awake to their own interests. Estate 

 proprietors say, however, that they make more of 

 their crops by selling them to traders than by pre- 

 paring the copra, and disposing of it on their 

 own account. This to a simple mind seems an 

 incredible statement, for the trader will certainly 

 not continue to carry on a business that yields him 

 no profit, while exposing him to the risk of loss in 

 the fluctuations of the market ; nor can the trader 

 prepare the copra and send it to market at a 

 cheaper rate than the estate proprietor. The 

 statement is true, nevertheless, and two causes 

 operate to make it 50. The experienced trader 

 knows to a nicety the amount of drying that will 

 pass muster, while the planter anxious to produce 

 a good quality, continuues the drying far beyond the 

 trader's point and in consequence takes from 5 • to 

 100 more nuts to the candy than the trader. This 

 would be all right were a close and skilful dis- 

 crimination exercised by the buyers, but what nicety 

 can be expected from those who do not take clean 

 and dry as their standard, but tix the price by the 

 mode of bringing the article to market. Thus we 

 find the prices stated in the market reports 

 as boat copra E3S-oO, cart copra R32-.50. The way 

 to test the value of copra would be to weigh a sam- 

 ple carefully, and then subject it to 2^50 degrees of 

 heat for two hours, then weij^h it again and note 

 how much it has lost. Thus it the price of the day 

 be IviO for perfectly dry and clean copra, say the 

 sample has lost 8 per cent in the process of desic- 

 Btion reducing the value by B3-2{) and it is dis- 

 coloured by smoke for which deduct lil 50 more. 

 fO»WngK1'70; the valuf will, thoreiore, be K33'(30 

 and !st> on for s'ill worse lote. The drier copra is, 

 it yields the .more oil in vropoftion to its \yeight ; the 

 cleaner it is, it ppleld? the beitcr 'iuality ; an inferiur 

 iiuality may suit the trader and the oil manufacturer, 

 but it is on the producer' of the raw material that 

 the loss of the difference in pricp of Oochin and 

 Ceylon oil ultimately falls and with him lies the 

 remedy, if a remedy its ever to be applied. All that 

 the planter can do in the first place is to dry his 

 own copra with due care, and thus do away with 

 the trader. If he then finds that he cannot obtain 

 the true value from the oil-makers, the second thing 

 is to make his own oil, and third if he cannot get 

 the true value in the local marliet, export it on bis 

 ffvD accouot' 



It is possible that soil and climate may 

 affect to some extent the quality of coconut 

 oil. The best sample at the Colindies was 

 from British Guiana, and is described as 

 not only pure white, but unusually solid. But 

 Mr. Field has not mentioned solidity as a test of 

 quality, and we have the remedy for colour in 

 our own hands as it consists of care in preparing 

 the copra ; whereas qualities depending on soil 

 or climate are beyond our reach, as we cannot 

 materially modify one or the other. 



As the climate of south-west Ceylon is not to 

 be depended on for nine months of the year, and 

 the other three are not altogether safe, as rain 

 falling on copra exposed to dry in the sun is 

 seriously injurious, as the heaviest gatherings of 

 nuts come in the wettest season, and as they 

 cannot be kept in husk for much over three 

 months without serious deterioration, I would 

 recommend every proprietor to provide his estate 

 with the means of drying his copra independently 

 of the weather. I have seen a perfectly success- 

 ful experiment in this direction with the material 

 of an old rusted iron tank cut up and substituted 

 for the " warratchy " shelf in the common smoking 

 shed, the seams being plastered over with tempered 

 clay : newly broken coconuts were then put on 

 and piled up to the roof, the usual fire of dry 

 husks was kept up night and day for forty-eight 

 hours, when the copra was taken out perfectly 

 clean and dry. All that is essentially required 

 is between the fire and the copra, a substance 

 that freely conducts heat, while turning aside 

 every particle of smoke. As a drying house 

 should be a permanent institution on every estate 

 of ten acres or upwards, the temporary make- 

 shift above described would be as little appro- 

 priate as a patent desiccator. 1,000 broken coco- 

 nuts in the shell, 2-50 cubic feet, thrown loosely 

 together, 3 ^ 10 x 8 feet, will give very nearly that 

 space ; therefore, a house 10 feet in length 8 feet 

 in width, will hold 1,000 three feet deep ; and 

 working 300 days it will dry 150,000 nuts, say 

 120 candies of copra in the year. Cabook walls 

 9 feet high and a tiled roof at 4 feet high, a sheet- 

 iron floor resting on iron bars one inch square, 

 and at 5 feet another floor of wooden spars 

 one inch apart gridiron fashion for the charge 

 to rest on : such a structure would not cost 

 RlOO and besides saving some labour, would 

 render the planter independent of weather. 



TEA-PLANTING IN CEYLON. 



The Y'ta-Plaiitei'i' Manual. By T. C. Owen, pp 

 162, with Coloured Lithouraphed Plates of an Iron 

 and a U'ood and Slone Tea Factory drawn to scale. 

 (Colombo, Ceylon : A. M. and J. Ferguson, 1886.) _ 



Eight years ago, on account of the depression in 

 the coffee industry of Ceylon, the prospects of the 

 c 'loiiy were of a sufficiently gloomy character. A 

 great* improvement has, however, been effected by 

 the partial stibstitutiou of tea and cinchona for coflfee, 

 and by the general attention given to cacao, carda- 

 moms, and other subsidiary subjects. Ceylon has 

 also been fortunate in possessing a practical scientifio 

 iftatitntion in the Botanical Gardens of the colony; 

 and its local press is enterprising and well-informed. 



It is well to mention here that the excellent growth 

 made by t-ja plants at the Peradeniya and llakgala 

 Gardens fully justified the advocacy of ;tea-plantmg 

 in Ceylon by" the late Dr. Thwaitea in his Annual 

 Reports, while it is also d?ip to the Colonial OfiBce 

 to state that through Lord Blacliford it warmly sup- 

 potted the introduction of Assam tea plants into Gey- 

 Ion in I8li7. In 1877 Ceylon tea in commercial sam- 

 plea was submitted, through the Royal Gardens, Kew, 

 to the Indian Connnittrc of the Society of Arts, and 

 the ileport of thin Committee cjearl^ foreshadowed 



