September i, 1882,] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



223 



treating the disease, ou plants from oue year old 

 downwards. A fiae healthy plant, with only a few 

 leaves affected, I strip of all diseased leaves to give 

 it another chance ; a plant from eight to twelve 

 months with a stem as thick as my tiuger, and all 

 its leaves affected, I cut down ; and, where a very 

 young plant has contracted the disease, I pull it up 

 altogether. I already know that stumping is little or 

 no good in the way of getting a healthy shoot, but 

 one here and there succeeds, it is worth while to 

 give it another chance. When the fungus attacks a 

 very small plant in the field, the best, way of deal- 

 ing with it is to destroy it at once ; it never will 

 be a healthy plant if left, and will always be a fresh 

 centre of infection as long as it lives; the chances are, 

 however, that it will die after shedding an immense 

 crop of spores. 



The young plants injured by the caterpillars have 

 mostly opened fresh leaves, but the check has made 

 them particularly liable to contract fungus, and I am 

 daily pulling tliem up, as it manifests itself. I could 

 not detect it on the plants when put out, but it was 

 probably latent in the nursery, else how could it ap- 

 pear so suddenly on the newly cleared laud ? 



I have a very small crop to gather this month, 

 the first-fruits of the thirty-two months old trees ; 

 its chfracleristics are great thickness and toughness 

 of pulp, a great quantity of very tenacious slime, 

 and thirty-five per cent of peaberry. A picked sample 

 of the largest dry parchment, 640 beans weighed oue 

 posnd, of the smallest it took 1,200 ; and of the uusorted 

 850. The average of the largest and smallest gives 

 920, but there is no more of the large and middling 

 sized than of the. very small ; the peaberry gives 

 more of the very small than the doubles, trebles are 

 very rare in Arabian cott'ee, but they are not uncom- 

 mon in Liberian. Of course, these fact^ and figures 

 decide nothing : I only record them while they are 

 fresh, and I have only a few handfuls of half dry 

 parchment to deal with. When I next write, Iwill 

 be able to tell more about it from further experi- 

 ments. For the last two months, I have been gather- 

 ing a few berries that dried on the trees, and, having 

 cleaned and thoroughly dried them, I find it takes 

 1,760 to make a pound, and perhaps a day or two 

 more in the sun may call for a greater tale to make 

 up the weight. There are a good many ' ifs' connected 

 with the future ; if we can get rid of Mmileia vast- 

 atrix, the if of ifs , if we can eliminate all but the 

 best varieties, if we can place them in congenial soil, 

 and if we feed them year by year with as much or 

 niore of the elements of fertility as we remove, there 

 is a fortune of R10,000 in 20 acres of such Liberian 

 coffee. This is however a mere dream of what might 

 be, if conditions were different from what they are ; 

 at the very foundation of such a system, we must have 

 no htmikiti; we must either succeed in establishing a 

 variety that will absolutely resist it under every cir- 

 cumstance, or we must have some means of effectually 

 combating it. Till one or other of those objects be 

 attained, we have no security tor our investments in 

 this product. We may, in favourable cases, recover 

 the original outlay, but while we see the pest surely 

 if slowly advancing, absorbing, one after another, our 

 most hopeful plants ; when we see that the most vigor- 

 ous tree that has once admitted a pinspot is lost 

 to profitable cultivation, after a struggle of longer or 

 shorter duration according to its essential stamina. 

 It is true that Liberian coffee plants have lived and 

 flourished for years in an atmosphere laden with the 

 germs of hniilcUi, but when we see those plants 

 stricken at last and rapidly suecumbing, we begin to 

 lose confidence and senously cou>ider, whether, under 

 the circumstances, it is a prudent course, to continue 

 extending the cultivation or to rather wait and watch, 

 for more knowledge to guide our action. There is 



no doubt, that, of all our new products, Liberian coffee 

 is the foremost, but for this one drawback, the li- 

 ability to the fungus. In the direction of an effectual 

 remedy, our hopes must be rather cold all round, but 

 with the certainty that among the vast variety there 

 are degrees of liability to contract fungus, we may do 

 much ni selecting seed from those plants alone, that 

 have stood the test of years and possess other good 

 qualities. In my own charge, I have still less than 

 ten per cent of affected plants, but my trouble arises 

 from the fact, that the percentage is increased by 

 every spell of wet weather, and the instances in which it 

 has been shaken oft are few and far between, and re- 

 cently spots have shown on some of my pet plants. 

 I have at length a few pods of cacao, on the few trees 

 that are just three years old, and even those a few 

 months younger are trying hard to bear. This plant, 

 so hard to establish, seems hardy enough, when it 

 gets up, to two and a half or three years, on toler- 

 ably sheltered spots, but on a gravelly soil, or an 

 exposed situation, it simply will not do any good, 

 though it has great tenacity of life, and sometimes 

 makes a start, after lingering between life and death 

 for a couple of years. 

 I The seed of wax-palm have been iu the ground 

 for three weeks, and on examining some today I 

 find no change whatever. A small nursery of cloves 

 (only forty seeds down); and I am waiting for a thousand 

 nutmegs, to commence that branch of cultivation. I 

 cannot speak very favourably of the cardamoms, but 

 vanilla seems to have found here exactly what it 

 requires to thrive on. Ceara rubber is already in some 

 cases nearly twenty feet high; and I will within the 

 year have my own seed tor extending its cultivation. 

 I am by degrees getting up fruit trees. The pumalo, 

 the citron, the orange, and the lime : somebody — I 

 forget who — ijromised me lemon seed. The citrus tribe 

 have their special caterpillar, and very difficult to 

 rear, to the height of three feet, when they are pretty 

 safe. I have only two or tliree mangoes, as all but 

 the best kinds are mere cumberers of the ground, 

 and I wait till I can get the best kinds. The Kew 

 pine seems destined to supersede all the inferior kinds. 

 I have only a few plants now, but hope soon to en- 

 large my stock of this magnificent product. I have 

 breadfruit, custard-apple, soursop, namuam, pome- 

 granate, coca, papaw, rambutau, &c., &c. I have 

 not gone in for a vegetable garden, and ornamental 

 plants, but these may come hereafter, with some leisure 

 to attend to them. "Jock," said the dying laird of 

 Dumbiedikes to his son, " when ye have nacthing else 

 to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree : it will be 

 growing when ye 're sleeping." 



A lowcouutry estate should grow some of every- 

 thing, that can be profitably cultivated, that con- 

 duces to the comfort of the resident, oris even pleas- 

 ant to the eye. W^th half' a score of different pro- 

 ducts, cultivated on one property, there can hardly be 

 such a general failure of crops, or depression of markets, 

 as to affect them all at the same time. If there be a 

 poor crop of coffee, the tea may be a good one ; 

 there may be a failure of the cocoa, but the rubier 

 may bleed ivell ; the bad fruit season may be a good 

 spice one, and v. v. It is not easy to find in Ceylon 

 a hundred acres of laud of uniform quality but by 

 multiplying our cultivated products we can suit all 

 (qualities, and put Ceard rubber or wax-palm, where 

 nothing else will grow. 



A writer in the Observer of 13th July accuses me of 

 being behind the age in those days of Scowen'a trans- 

 plmters, and coffee seed at a rupee a thousand in 

 that I have be^u using b:i-kets, to rear my plants ; 

 and advises me to sow ^-eed enough for the per- 

 centage destroyed by crici.ets, as well as for my own 

 wants. 

 I answer, that for upwards of two years the per- 



