April 2, 1883.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



80s 



issue of slave laboui-. Labour collapsing, what comes 

 of the security upon railway debentures ? What for 

 that of the borrowed capital ? What of all securities 

 connected with the coffee enterprize of Brazil ? Let 

 those concerned consider these questions, and, if poss- 

 ible, provide for theui. I am merely considering how 

 they affect the cjuestiou of the supply of coffee to 

 the market of the world, and next how this touches 

 the value of estates iu Ceylon. Six-and twenty years 

 ago I concluded that the slave trade from Africa be- 

 ing declared piracy by Brazil, and various iuHuences 

 bemg iu direct .action upou the slave stock witliiu the 

 Empire, such as all children of slaves being free, and 

 facilities afforded to slaves for purchasing their free- 

 dom, the dav would not be distivnt when coUnpse must 

 follow for lack of labour. But tbere followed an un- 

 calculated action — mortgagees of slaves working in 

 Bahia, and generally iu the north of Brazil, on cot- 

 ton, finding that the labour of these slaves, if sent 

 south of Kio and employed in the coffee industry, 

 would pay far better, had them trausfeiTed to Santos, 

 &e., and employed iu coffee cultivation and extension. 

 Of course the consequence of this would be to put 

 back difficulty or collapse, ou the score of labour. 

 Aud another elemimt came iu The Brazilians 

 were not slow to see that every adult set free for cult- 

 ure was a gaiu. Before they had railways, they had 

 to employ from 80,000 to 100,000 mules to work their 

 transport, which we may assume involved 100,000 slaves 

 to Work these animals, aud grow their food, &c. 

 These have been liberated for employment on the coffee 

 Laroiira siuce 20 years ago. And, moreover, if we 

 grasp the fact that a vast extent of land most suit- 

 able tor coffee has been, by hook or crook, planted 

 with trees which are not pruned nor cultivated, but 

 which in a state of nature, though left to contend with 

 weeds, continue year by year still to throw a stream of 

 coffee upon the market of the world, we must see 

 natural and sufficient reason for postponement thus far 

 of the collapse, which I consider is inevitable in the end. 

 The slaves dying off', sources of liberation increasint; the 

 proportion of free blacks, the time must precipitate 

 itself with something of revolutionary force, when the 

 Oovernment of Brazil will not be aide to enforce the 

 remnant of slavery in the Brazilian Empire. What then?" 

 At the time R. B. T. wrote the above (December 

 1878) Java coffee was at 42 cents. — Yours truly. 



HOPEFUL. 



MR. HALLILEY ON AVEEDS. 



Dear Sir, — As the governor of a steam-engine regul- 

 ates the steam, so weeds regulate the moisture to tlie 

 coffee tree. In all my letters I said a carpet of weeils. 

 I no more believe iu not weeding than you do, but I believe 

 in keeping a carpet of weeds by pulling up the big weeds 

 and mulching the roots of the coffee tree or burying the 

 weeds as the weeding is done, without favoritism, and carry- 

 ing the weeds to the compost heap and then giving it to 

 a favored few. Weeds regidate the moisture by absorb- 

 ing any superabundance iu wet weather, and by keeping 

 the soil moist iu dry weather. It it was not for weeds, 

 would the Ouchterlony Valley estates have been the best 

 paying estates iu the world and how comes it that, pre- 

 vious to clean weeding, Ceylon estates paid, when coffee 

 was as many shillings a bushel to what it is rupees now ? 

 After clean weeding what came over the old districts, 

 with the exception of a few estates that had substitutes 

 for weeds? What came over Kurunegala, Matale, Rak- 

 waua, Kaduganuawa, &c., &c. Take old Kabragalla above 

 Nawalapitiya. It used to be a fine old estate aud in 1874 

 (1 think) was advertized for sale, and the advertizement 

 stated that it never had leaf-disease. It was purchased 

 for £15, ("'00, and then clean weeding was insisted on, and 

 now what has become of the once fine estate ? 



The substitutes for weeds are first boulders aud stones, 



next thatch and last water-holes. Boulders and stones 



can only shade the soil, and prevent the drj-ing of the 



moisture; they cannot regidate it. In England the farmers 



102 



remove all stones out of their land, as they have a moist 

 climate aud do not require the soil shaded ; in Spain the 

 farmers retain all the stones, and, when asked the rea- 

 son, lift up a stoue and point to the moisture. Spain l)e- 

 ing a warmer climate requires more moisture than England. 

 In the countries where they cultivate oranges to any 

 quantity, they grow lupines in between aud mulch the 

 roots of the orange trees with them. Thatch is about 

 the same as boulders and stones. In 1858 I visited poor 

 Whittaker on Sembawatte in Yakdesas and he showed 

 me some coffee he thatched aud you could not wish to 

 have better looking coffee or better crops, but it was too 

 expensive to carry out to any extent. Water-holes simply 

 retain the rainfall aud force it to soak into the ground. 

 Iu 1872, after a foi-tnight's r.ain, I put on people to plant 

 my second clearing, and I was greatly surprized after so 

 much rain to find that the soil iu the holes was quite 

 dry, which is proof that on clean land the rainfall does 

 soak into the ground. Coffee wants a certain amount of 

 moisture, coffee always looks its best in the rainy season, 

 and coffee is always better on a hollow than it is on a 

 ridge. Is there anything in the world cultivated as we 

 cultivate our coffee, and is simply keeping the ground 

 clean aud reducing oiu" trees to a nicely arranged frame- 

 work cultivation ? No, it is fighting against nature. 



There is nothing new under the sun : there is no such 

 thing as spontaneous production and in reaUty there is 

 no such thing as hybridization. A half-caste or a Creole 

 botanically speaking is a hybrid, but in reality are the 

 same animal man, and man has so adapted himself to 

 localities that if he were plants or trees he would hardly 

 be recognized as the same species. So it is with plants 

 or trees : they will only mix or hybridize with their own 

 species, and they have so adapted themselves to localities 

 as often to be mistaken for something new. So that 

 leaf-disease is nothing new, is not spontaneous and is not 

 a hybrid: it is something very old, something that must 

 have existed iu Ceylon long before coffee was introduced, 

 aud must have attacked the first shuck or neglected cof- 

 fee tree in Ceylon but was not noticed. If a tree takes 

 up too much moistmre without a sufficient quantity of 

 essential food, the result is mililew aud if the tree can- 

 not take up a sufficient quantity of food for want of 

 moisture, the result is mildew, .so that leaf-disease is 

 nothing more nor less than mildew adapted itself 

 in a different form iu the locality. Mildew is yellow 

 in the coffee, vine, castor, pineapple and other 

 plants, it is white iu the orange, is ash- colored in 

 the rose tree, and is almost black iu some trees, 

 aud the cure for mildew is light, a sufficient supply of 

 essential food and a regular supply of moisture, and how 

 is the moisture to be regulated without a carpet of weeds? 

 — I remaiu,yours truly, Ci. F. HALLILEY. 



[We regret that this letter shoulil have got mislaid 

 and .so been delayed. — Ed.] 



COFFEE PLANTING:— WEEDS; STRIPPING 

 LEAVES AND LEAF-DLSEASE. 



Deaf. Sir,— Though rather late in the day, permit me 

 to make a few renuirks on some points that have 

 been lately discussed in your columns. 



1. — Weeds but slightly exhaust the soil till they 

 begin to seedj and //(f/t the mischief begins. Could 

 they be dug into the ground before seeding the soil 

 would be enriched rather than impoverished. This 

 digging however iuvolves too much time, labor and 

 money, with also the risk of wash. The system of 

 merely hand-pulling the big weeds on a dirty estate 

 has olteu been tried aud never found to answer, as 

 the white weed soon gives place to grass and other 

 spreading weeds, which do harm and must be scraped off. 



2. Some 18 months ago I tried pulling oft' all the 



leaves of a coffee tree as a remedy for leaf-ilisease. 

 Several of the primaries blackeued and ditd off', 

 others threw out foliage, which within about a month's 

 time became infected with disease. It does nut seem 

 to be generally known that when a coffee leaf is 

 pulled oft no other grows to take its place : a 

 brauchlet, not a leaf, will spring from the point. 



