July i, 1882.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



31 



Cinchona. — While some planters are advertizing for 

 old newspapers wherewith to clothe their shaved cin- 

 chona trees, the " old rag" Ijeiu" carefully pri-jtrved 

 for this purposes in many bungalows, in othtr cuees 

 the leaves of the cinchona itself tied on with nmna 

 grass are found to do very fairly for a temporary 

 clothin;». By many the shaving of trees from 3 yuars 

 old and upivards is considered to be preventative of 

 canker and decay at tlie roots. Blocks of wood are 

 used as substantial substitutes for the bottles filled 

 with sand in loosing bark fr. ni twigs and brunches 

 preparatory to stripping. By the way that was an 

 interesting letter from a "Cinnamon Planter" the 

 other day in which he described the preparation of 

 " chips," the cost of scraping which is 3c. per lb. 

 (while the value is from 7c. to 8c). The margin of profit 

 is here certainly very close, and like the young twigs 

 of inferior cinchona it will scarcely jjay to harvest 

 them. — Planiiuij Cor. 



Well Irrigation. — Mr. E. B. Thomas, a retired 

 Madr.is Civilian, has nddressed the Goverament of Ind- 

 ia on a subject which is now receiving great attention, 

 irrigation of land by means of wells. In the Jaft'na 

 Peninsula, well irrigation has been carried to great 

 perfection, but the system is surely applicable to 

 many other parts of the colony where irrig:itiou tanks 

 would be failures. From Mr. Thooias's paper we quote 

 as follows ; — In Indi.a, under the influence of a tropical 

 sun, waters w ill produce grain in almost pure sand, and 

 no ou'', therefore, will probably question the oft-re- 

 peated assertion " that irrigation (wherever practicable) 

 should be extended to the utmost." It surely has been 

 so to a very large extent. In three provinces in 

 which I served (in Tinuevelly seven years; in Coim- 

 batore eighteen years; in Tnchinopoly three), I know 

 that under the care of intelligent engineer otfioers every 

 drop of available water for irrigation was utilized in 

 cut channels of 70 and SO miles long. No waste 

 water reached the sea except at high floods. All 

 river water was diverted into water-courses or into 

 tanks, the rice crops being often finally saved ly 

 ivc'ds, when the channels began to fail. But much lies 

 behind the one word " practicable. " Irrigation is only 

 practicable in level tracts bordering on perennial and 

 unfailing rivers, chiefly from the south-west monsoon. 

 To cover India with a network of channels and series 

 of tanks, all certain to dry up on lir.st failure of the 

 monsoons, would only be a costly delusion. There 

 are many provinces above the level of practicable 

 irrigation; others with only small temporary rivers, 

 which are torrents in the rains, but dry beds at oth'-r 

 times. Again, there are soils unfit for irrigation, where 

 water, if supplied, either disappears as through a sponge, 

 or where the permeating water brings to the surface 

 suits or other latent ingredients fatal to crops (some such 

 are found, I believe, on parts of the great Ganges canal). 

 One failure of a monsoon dries up all tanks and 

 channels not fed by a perevnial river; but a ivdl 

 will stand one, or even two, such failures, and still 

 irrigate a portion of the land immediately round it, 

 and save grain enough for the ryot's family, while 

 the straw saves his cattle, with driuking water fur 

 both. Moreover, the water raised and used for the 

 fields near the well percolates partly aijain into the 

 wells, and is raised a second time, for renewed use. 

 Not so with a tank or channel; the water flows once 

 ovi r, and off', the fidd, and is lost. The well, too, 

 is the ryot's own jiroperty, and adds (tenfold) to 

 the sakahle value of his land, and is thus a safeguard 

 and an advantage both to the ryot and the State ; for, if 

 the ryot prospers, |the .State benefits, and is sure of its 

 rent. " Mountain reservoirs" are specious, but practic- 

 alli/ of Utile use : as too distant, the water is absorbed 

 and wasted ere it reach the plain : canals, where 

 practicable, and branch rail roads, where required, 

 are self-evident necessities. 



The Tithb of a Coffee Pdlpek.— The Natal Mer- 

 cury, in an article on Madagascar, gives curious details 

 of the galling interference of the native custom officers, 

 amongst vvhioli we find the following : — They one day 

 wanted to get for the Government the ten per cent, 

 duty for a machine for disengaging the grain of coffee 

 from tlie pulp, and weie actually on' the point o 

 cultiug off at one end the tenth part in length of the 

 machine, and so totally destroying it. This is of course 

 very ridiculous, but it is illustrative. 



Pterocaepus Santa LINUS or Red Sanders Seed. — 

 Noticing a new advertizement in today's (May 12th) 

 issue forthesale of iheseed of thisvaluable tree, we quote 

 what Balfour, in his "Timber Trees of Southern India," 

 says : — " Its wood is sold by weight as a dye wood and 

 forms a regular article of export. The natives con- 

 vert it into posts for bouses .and it is preferred to any 

 other timber. It is heavy, extn-mely hard with a 

 fine grain, much used as a dye-wood by color manu- 

 facturers and also in turnery taking a beautiful 

 polish. It yields its coloring matter to alcohol and 

 ether but not to water. " 



A Good Storv comes from Mincing Lane. A mer- 

 chant lately gave a broker a sample to value for him, 

 and this was done, and reported as being worth 5d a 

 lb. It was eventually put op to public auction, and, 

 on the merits of the sample, realized 6d a lb. When 

 the merchant next met the broker, he upbraided him 

 for having undervalued the tea. The broker admitted 

 this ; but added that the Customs had valued it at still 

 less, for it had been ordered to be burned — the fact 

 being that the two ends of the boxes from which the 

 sample would he taken had a layer of inferior tea, 

 while the inside was filled with rubbish. This, 

 luckily, was discovered before the "tea" got into 

 "consumption. "—London corresj'ondtnt of "Aberdeen 

 Journal." 



A Conclusion about Crops. — A correspondent writes: 

 — "Dear Sir, — In the letter headed 'Necessity for 

 Retrenchment,' in your issue of 10th inst., we find 

 the words : — ' The crops of the last (en years have 

 been governed by a visitation which no human wis- 

 dom could have foreseen. ' The impossibility of the 

 foresight may be doubted, because coffee leaf-disease 

 seems but a parallel to the potato, hop, and vine 

 diseases. lu each case the diverse natural vegetation 

 of large tracts of land has been destroyed to make 

 room tor the cultivation of a single plant, and the 

 V .nous diseases must surely be regarded as the efforts 

 of nature to reassert itself. This is my Conclusion. " 

 Our correspondent's conclusion has suggested itself 

 to many minds, but it is liable to some qualification, 

 for the vegetation which nature herself pl.aces in a 

 certain habitat is liable to disease and death. In many 

 parts of Australia, notably in Gipps Land, we passed 

 through square miles of what had been verdant forest, 

 but which hfid been converted by a small moth, that ate 

 up every leaf, even of the pungent Eucalypti, into an 

 expanse of .still grand but gaunt and weird-looking 

 sk.letons. Our jungle trees here are not exempt from 

 visitations Of the kind. The guava is specially the 

 victim of the coccus which at one time threatened to 

 kill our coftee. It did not succeed, and we trust the 

 fungus will be equally unsuccessful in the attempt at 

 extirption. It is only recently that the rules of true 

 science have been .applied to the laws of nature ge.erally 

 and of plant life specially, and we have still much to 

 learn. We suppose that most of us, if we had the 

 ordering <if matters, would dispense with destructive and 

 noxious insects and vegetable growths. Why venomous 

 snakes should have been created or "developed" 

 is to most of ns as much a mystery as the existence 

 of evil and an evil one. We have to face the facts 

 nevertheless. 



