September r, 1882.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



239 



as a primary agent iii the production of the present 

 crisis. In neitlier respect can we agree with liim, 

 any more than in the position taken up that the visita- 

 tion of the fatal fungus was due to predisposition 

 of the trees to be injuriously affected. We think 

 it will be universally admitted that never was coffee 

 in Ceylon better culti\'ated, more vigorous, more fruit- 

 ful than in 1869. That was the year of our culm 

 iiiatiug crop and simultaneously came the develop- 

 ment over our cultivated coffee of a fimgus which, 

 beyond doubt, had been previously latent on the 

 allied trees of our jungles. Some of the cultivated 

 coffee was of course debilitated from age, but a 

 large proportion was young, and of this description 

 a great addition was made to that existing in the 

 half-dozen years which followed 1869. Additions 

 wei'e made to existing cultivation in that period at 

 a rate entirely unprecedented. Prices of coffee were 

 good, and planters, until taught by bitter experience, 

 refused to take the same serious view of the effects 

 of hemileia vctstalrix, which scientific onlookers held 

 and expressed. We had all to learn, what " W." 

 apparently wants us to unlearn, that the minute 

 fungus which had so suddenly and mysteriously ap- 

 peared was the deadliest foe which coffee had ever 

 encountered, a foe which, while it no doubt told 

 most heavily on old and debilitated trees, did not 

 spare the youngest and most vigorous, but attacked 

 them repeatedly and pertinaciously, feeding on their 

 life-blood, and so gi'adually reducmg them also to 

 such a condition of debility, that to them the double 

 task of keeping up successive crops of foliage and 

 still producing fruit became impossible. No doubt 

 the vh'ulence of the attack varied in different sea- 

 sons, in different districts and on different estates. 

 Constituents of soil, the presence of manure, the effect of 

 tillage, light and heavy pninrng, the presence or absence 

 of weeds, and — a most material factor in the case^ 

 the presence or absence of grubs at the feeding 

 rootlets of the tree — all told. The recuperative powers 

 of the coffee trees, too, especially of the younger ones, 

 and the instinctive tendency to fruit the more ex- 

 istence was threatened, must not he forgotten. Hence 

 the capricious results which " W." would trace to 

 seasons and occult influences, alone or mainly, under- 

 estimating the effect of fungus on the leaves and 

 utterly and unaccountably ignoring the destruction 

 of the feeding rootlets of the trees, whereby the 

 candle of life was burnt at both ends. And coffee 

 suffered, has suffered, does suffer, from the iiidinct as 

 well as the dii-ect effects of a fungus which, like 

 the white ant in the case of cocoa and other plants, 

 does not wait for conditions of decay to attack 

 vegetable tissues. We have heard of planters recom- 

 mendmg the remedy for grub of so feeding them 

 with manure, that they might be diverted from prey- 

 ing on the rootlets. The remedy proved very ques- 

 tionable as regarded the cockchafer grubs, while in 

 the case of the fungus, planters who manured heavily 

 found, over and over again, that most of the fertil- 

 izing substances supplied to strengthen the coffee 

 bushes went simply to feed fresh crops of parasites. 

 What wonder then, if owing to such experience and 

 the absence of paying crops, manuring was given up 

 by many in despair ; by many otliers from sheer 

 inability to bear the necessai-y expenditure. Tlie 

 ^orcn/cHce of fungus and grub may be and no doubt is 

 duB to abnormal seasons, those abnormal seasons 

 being again due to " W." 's "' occult " causes. But we 

 cannot and dare not undervalue the effects of the 

 apeoifio peats while they exist, any more than we 



should venture to disregard the external and obvious 

 symptoms of enteric or jungle fevers, because we know 

 that the one is due to loul water or mephitic aases 

 while we infer that the other is due to an occult 

 cause to which we give the name of malaria Had 

 'W., instead of taking for granted a predisposition 

 in our coffee trees to the attacks of the funcus which 

 developed in ISfiO and onwards, adopted" the pos- 

 ition that our exclusive devoi'ion to one product with 

 which we had covered vast unbroken e.v pauses was 

 to blame, as an outrage on the general ari-ani-ements 

 and laws of nature, we could understand and lareelv 

 sympathize with him. Indeed, if „-e are at libertv 

 to infer the designs of Providence from his disnens 

 ations and their effects, the disaster which has over 

 taken our coffee culture, like that which previouslv 

 desolated the potato crops in Irehind, was intended 

 as a punishment for a too exclusive devotion to one 

 food product and an incentive to the cultivation of 

 a more varied list of plam.s— " new products " in 

 fact. Unhappily experience has led us but too lareelv 

 to agree with "W." as to the hopelessness of the 

 attempt, by topical applications, to banish the ubiquit 

 ous leaf lungus. Its powers of reproduction are such 

 that, if a particular estate or group of estates could 

 be cleared this month, the chances are that thev 

 would be as badly affected as ever the next 



We cannot, however, agree with "W." jq (-i 

 fear that, if the pest were completely got rid of \t 

 would be certain to reappear in it3 pristine destr'uct 

 iveness. We have the history of the black bu.^ or 

 scale insect to guide us. That pest also existed in 

 our jungles, but after a more obvious fashion 

 and with much more cosmopolitan tastes than ate 

 characteristic of the coffee leaf parasite. As the 

 suit, no doubt, of the presence of an expanse of 

 suitable food and the occurrence of abnormal seasons 

 black bug nearly forty years ago suddenly swept like 

 a deadly epidemic over the whole of the cultivated 

 coffee of Ceylon Whole vallevs and mountain sides 

 turned from healthy green to funereal black and the 

 fear entertained regarding bug then, as it is in re 

 ference to the fungus now, was that it would prove 

 the absolute destroyer of the coffee euterprize Topical 

 applications, such as dusting with saltpetre, &c were 

 as ineffectual then as lime, sulphur, carbolic acid &c 

 have been in the recent fight against the fuiWus' 

 But (and now wo are again with " W " as" to 

 the potent influences of seasons and the occult influ 

 ences which guide their character) the seasons chanr-ed 

 after the disastrous years IS-ie to 1849 ; black baa 

 disappeared, and, instead of its coming back and being a 

 bad as ever, as " W." fears will happen in the case 

 of hemileia, it has never since given the planters 

 much trouble, being confined to small exceptional patches 

 of coffee estates, and affecting crop to no appreciable 

 extent. What has happened m the case of black hn.' 

 we have a right to look for in the case of hemileTa 

 vastatrix. We are experiencing— thanks probably to 

 to the more or less occult influence of "sun-spots " 

 as the .!olar whirlwinds iire called— an abnormal season 

 and planters, whose opinions are worthy of respect' 

 ar« most hopeful th.it the result will be to drown 

 out both fungus and grub. If the pests once dis 

 appear, our reasonable hope is that, although thev 

 may not be blotted out of existence .their reappear 

 ance will not be iu a deadly epidemic form but in 

 the shape of slightly s|ioradic attacks, suffici.-n't merely 

 t.< keep planters on the qui vive and to prevent their 

 neglecting any precautious against the old exhausted 

 foes or such new ones as are possibly destined to 

 develope with reference to new circumstances The 

 '■thorns and briers" curse \ix, a reality and an ex- 

 tent winch we can recognize, however "little we can 

 understand that and a th..Hsand other mysteries of 

 our nature and our environments. That the same 



