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THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[April 2, 1883. 



but the plants are coming forward pretty well, at least 

 to my inexperienced eye. 



The drought told earliest on the TVutmeff nursery, The 

 beds are kept well shaded so that no sun directly reaches 

 the plants, yet two daily waterings will not keep them from 

 drooping. The cardamoms stood out longer, but they too 

 are now looking seedy, and require water, though two feet 

 high and partially shaded by standing trees. Hitherto the 

 Tanilla vines seem to enjoy all the sun they get, and still 

 grow vigorously. 



The other day I discoved the common green caterpillar 

 preying on the leaves of a young coffee field in thousands. 

 I have known this insect for forty years, and never saw 

 it touch coffee before. I had a gang of boys for two days 

 at work, picking and killing. 



I have suspended weeding till rain comes. Indeed it could 

 be safely suspended for a couple of months, but for one 

 weed that would be called an annual elsewhere, but;is a 

 montldy here. It is a grass, that sheds its seeds within 

 a month of its appearance above ground, and grows as 

 freely in dry as in wet weather. It produces a very large 

 number of very minute seeds that are carried everywhere 

 by the wind, and if left to propagate freely the land 

 would be a good pasture field in six mouths. 



Speaking of weeds, I knew an estate, well nigh thirty 

 years ago, that had been in bearing twelve years, and iu 

 no one of those years did the crop cover the expendit- 

 ure of its year. The proprietor did not follow the usual 

 practioe of those days in such cases, uamely, making over 

 the estate to his agents for one-tenth of what it had 

 cost him ; he merely changed his agent. The very first 

 year of the new management gave him a profit of several 

 hundreds, and the second nearer £4,000 than £3,000. This 

 change in the character of the estate was due to thorough 

 weeding and praniug. "When the philo-wecdists can 

 point out a clean estate that improTed its bearing 

 by letting it get into weeds, then they may hope 

 to convert some of those who believe in the now com- 

 mon practice, that took so long a time to take 

 root, but is now too firmly established, to be 

 eradicated by anything short of unquestionable facts ; 

 certainly never by loose, speculative theories. It may be 

 that coffee planting is a doomed industry in Oeylon. If so, 

 it will not be saved by resucitating old systems, tried long 

 ago, condemned and abandoned for good and sufficient 

 reasons. Our side rests on a theory, as old as agriculture 

 itself, and is only questioned from time to time by those who 

 practically failed in mastering the ever-present enemy of 

 the cultivator. When the garden of the sluggard gets 

 overrun, he suddenly discovers that weeds do no harm, 

 and when it gets worse he rises to the sublime absurdity 

 of declaring that weeds do good in cultivated land. "The 

 grand old man " may not be much of a practical agri- 

 culturist, but every one owns him a fine intellect. In one 

 of his speeches he told his audience thatevery thing thatgrew 

 on cultivated land, besides the cultivated plant, was a weed, 

 and every weed was a thief and a robber. Hamlet, iu com- 

 plaining of the state of affairs in the court of Denmark, 

 says : — 



" Fie on't, fie ! 't is an unweeded garden, 

 That grows to seed." 

 — the nastiest thing he could think of. 



We live, Mr. Editor, in a great age. Not only is patient, 

 scientific investigation giving us day by day greater power 

 over natiure, but we have among us some gifted brethren, 

 who communicate to us the will and ways of nature's God 

 without the toil and trouble of observing facts, or forcing 

 nature by special experiments. One of those great ones 

 is he who has from his iimer consciousness evolved the 

 great announcement, that weeds are the choicest gift that 

 a beneficent creator has bestowed on the cultivator of 

 coffee. The original curse referred merely to thorns and 

 thistles, but the ageratum, the spinous needle, and the 

 pasture grasses, are neither thorns nor thistles, and to the 

 incessant war carried on agaiust_ those precious gifts of 

 nature we owe the terrible visitation that has ruined our 

 once flourishing industry and carried sorrow and suffering 

 to thousands in its train. Had this prophet declared his 

 mission earlier, Oeylon might have retrenched the salary of 

 Marshall Ward. The remedy for all the ills the planter 

 suffers is to let his weeds grow ! ! 



EXPORT TRADE OF MADAGASCAR. 



A member of the Madagascar Embassy has supplied 

 the following interesting information to the Chamber 

 of Commerce Journal :— 



The next important article of export from Mada- 

 gascar is caoutchouc or india-rubber. Tho caoutchouc 

 is procured both from a tree and from a vine, but 

 all that I have seen on the east coast of Madagascar 

 is taken from a vine, and if the india-rubber tree is 

 found in Madagascar it is only on the west coast. It 

 is not very many years since the natives were first 

 taught that the India-rubber vine was such a valu- 

 able plant. It is true the children would collect the 

 the juice of the vine and with the juice of a lemon 

 coagulate it, but about fifteen years ago foreigners 

 first taught them the value of it, and it is, now an 

 important occupation of those natives who are of a 

 rough and rambling character to go out into the 

 wood to collect it. * » * * 



A party of five or six men is formed, each having 

 an axe and a bottle of sulphuric acid and as much rice 

 as he can' carry. They are also provided with a few 

 cooking pots, and of late years they generally take 

 with them a gun by which means they can procure 

 themselves food. These men strike into the forest 

 until they find traces of the vine, then they camp and 

 set to work to out the vines down. These vines are 

 perhaps six inches iu diameter at their roots and taper 

 off a! they climb round the trees of the forest, form- 

 ing one entangled mass. The Malagasy climb the trees 

 and cut every branch that can be found, nor do they 

 spare even the roots of the plant. These vines are cut 

 into pieces two feet long, and placed on end in a trough 

 of bamboo out of which the milky like juice is con- 

 ducted to an iron pot. A few drops of sulphuric acid 

 immediately converts the juice into a curd, which be- 

 comes the indiarubber of commerce. It will be noticed 

 that the Madagascar indiarubber of commerce is in 

 balls, just as it is made in these two and four-gallon 

 iron cooking pots. The difference in the quality of 

 indiarubber depends upon the soil, and also upon the 

 period of ripeness at which the vine is cut. Ripe old 

 vines that are found in the virgin forests of the north- 

 east of Madagascar produce the indiarubber known 

 as the " best pink." Indiarubber is bought from 

 the natives now at as much as lOd and Is per lb., 

 though five years ago they sold it at 6d, It under- 

 goes a shrinkage of 20 to 30 per cent, in weight, how- 

 ever, before it arrives in London. 



Another valuable export from Madagascar is " Grim 

 Animi," the gum of the copal tree. There are two 

 chief qualities found in the north-east of the island, 

 the white and the red, the former being by far the 

 better of the two. It is not the deposit from year 

 to year which we see in our markets, but the ancient 

 deposits which have fallen from the trees years and 

 years ago, and which the natives dig for. When they 

 discover a forest of copaliers they do not look up at 

 the trees for the gum, but they immediately dig for it, 

 and I have seen pitces of gum of 8 or 10 lbs. weight 

 found underneath deposits of earth of several inches in 

 thickness. Gum is bought from the natives at 5d per lb. 



Wax from Madagascar is beginning to be an im- 

 portant article of export, and I have quite recently 

 heard that the quality is very good. It is a notice- 

 able fact that the honey of Madagascar is of a greenish 

 tint and tlhus different to that of most other countries ; 

 there is also a poisonous honey in the island, but the 

 wax as far as I am aware, is the same as anywhere 

 else. It fetches about 5d a lb. in Madagascar. 



It is not probable that any Madagascar rice over 

 comes to England, but it is none the leas an important 

 item of British commerce, as a great deal is yearly 

 shipped to tho British colony of Mauritius. 



Cojce and Sugar growing are to be the great in- 



