December i, 1882.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 



493 



TEA AND CINCHONA CULTIVATION IN THE 

 HILL-COUNTRY OF CEYLON. 



LiNDULA, Nov. 12th, 1882. 

 Ab seen from the railway train in passing, the cacao 

 and Liberian coffee on " Liberia " estate looked flouri- 

 shing and tliat tlie latter presented no external signs of 

 leaf-disease. This fact was noted, because I liad be told 

 that hemileia rasfatrix liad latterly attacked the large 

 leaved coflee with, if anything, more virulence than 

 m the case of the Arabian species. No doubt if 

 Liberian coffee is badly attacked, the idea of virul- 

 ence will be exaggerated in j.roportion to the much 

 gi-eater surface of leaf covered with the brown and 

 orange coloured sporangia. I may add that I have 

 seldom seen the old species of coffee looking fresher or 

 more free of disease : alas, however, that I should have 

 to add, freer of crop. It is true, however, thati have 

 not been on Balmoral or any other of the exceptionally 

 favoured coflee estates, wliere " the colour " (gi-cen, 

 golden and ruby in succession) still shews. On a well- 

 known estate in Kotmalie, which for nearly forty 

 years of its existence yielded large and profitable crops, 

 I noticed large patches of coffee bushes uijrooted, to 

 make room for cinchona plants and tea sown " at stake." 

 I hope the experiment of placing the seeds iu situ will 

 be more successful than has been the case with a few 

 put into holes here. Plants from seeds simultaneously 

 sown in the nursery and then " planted out " are much 

 more advanced, uotwitlistanding the shock of removal. 

 On the Kotmalie estate referred to, was tried one of 

 the first expermients with cinchona succirubra on 

 worn-out coffee land. Accustomed for several years 

 back m journeyings up and down to watch the pro- 

 gress of i;his grove of cinchona, it was a shock to 

 me on this occasion to see the space vacant. I was 

 told that the trees had been coppiced. It would be 

 very interesting to know the pecuniary liistory of this 

 experiment and also to learn the fate of the 

 stools left in the ground. There was, of course 

 good grounds for preferring the coppicing pro- 

 cess to the now popular one of scraping or shaving. 

 Where the trees are vigorous and shew no sinii of 

 " dying off," all the arguments are m favour o( this 

 process. It can, it is now beUeved, be repeated withm 

 each twelve months, so that two harvestings of shavings 

 can he ohtauied per annum for several, perhaps for 

 many years, before the necessity for coppicing or uproot- 

 ing arises. And as a well-known planter in thisilistrict 

 has tuliy proved, each successive crop of bark after the 

 tu'st. IS hkely to be superior iu quality to the fii-st and 

 to fetch correspondmgly higher prices, in the ratio of 2s 

 per lb. for ongmal bark and 5s for renewed. This has 

 been the result ui the case of succirubra trees, sul)iected 

 to the shavmg process, and, as the robust hybrids or 

 cincliona rolmsta, of the glabrous and pubescent foi-ms 

 are hkely to give even better retimis, the question 

 has been raised whether the thne and expense neces- 

 saiy to raise pure Ledgers from the mnsery or by 

 grafting on succuubra stocks could not be better 

 bestowed on the more vigorous kinds, if even then- 

 renewed barks are neither so thick nor so rich m alkaloids 

 as IS undoubtecUy the case with the best forms of 

 Calisaya Ledgeriana. The bark of both succu-ubra and 

 robusta is pretty thick ; the matured trees bem^ of 

 large diameter, yield large quantities and after the^fiist 

 shaving the renewed hark will be rich in the most 

 precious of the alkaloiils,— quinine. The Led"ers are 

 deUcate, apt to suffer from cUmatc and diseas-'e, whUe 

 succirubra and m an eminent degi-ce robusta, is vigorous 

 and disease resisting. The wondeifidly fresh look of the 

 glabrous foliaged robustas has especially struck me here, 

 where ealisayas, officinalis and iu a lesser degi-ce succi- 

 rabras have suffered from the disease which lirst appeared 

 on the gum frees. The district is ringuig with and rejoic- 

 ing at the good fortune of the owner of " Waverley" estate 

 who is said to hay© realized about R8,000 ftoju the 



DO 



bark of 3,200 or 3,500 trees. It woiUd be interesting 

 and usefiU to leai'n the ago of the trees and whe- 

 therthey were coppiced, uprooted, or merely shaved 

 Of the value of a forest of several hunch-eds of 

 thousands of cinchonas, standing up amidst fields 

 of coflee, I foi-med a vivid and high opinion 

 when on the mormng of the 10th I accompanied the 

 laii-d of Mattekelle over a portion of his beautifiU 

 domain of plantations and swelling patenas. In the 

 plantations are from 600,000 to 800,000 cinchonas, 

 many of them well advanced, and if these resist disease 

 and the twice-a-year shaving process, they will form a 

 source of wealth far superior to the coffee which 

 sheltered them when young and winch now they are 

 over-shadowing. Here for the first time I saw the "shav- 

 ing process apphed systematically and extensively, and 

 I was much struck with the improvement, since years 

 ago, I assisted at some of the fii-st experiments, iiiade 

 with Mr. Moens' method, which is now likely entirely 

 to supersede poor Maclvor's stripping process. The 

 shaving instrument, in the use of which the coolies are 

 so expert that tree after tree is rapidly completed, is 

 an adaptation of the carpenter's spoke shave, with an 

 opening wide enough for the long shavings easUy to 

 sHp through, and the knife so set that, witli'one 

 operation, just the proper proportion of the epidermis 

 and inner liark are removed, the wood being nowhere 

 bared. From above downwards and from below up- 

 wards, the coolies seemed able to operate with equal 

 ease, and a dozen or a score of trees can be sliaved 

 in the time in which one conld he stripped. The 

 shavings are more easily dried than the whole bark 

 and they can be pressed into bales of limited size, so' 

 as to save freight. Mr. Smith told us he was a convert 

 to the process of covering the trees after shaving, not 

 because of the effects of weather on the health cf the trees 

 but because of the gi-eater quantity and better quality of 

 the bark obtaiued by covering. He uses the convenient 

 patena grass, and he gave a good reason for preferring 

 grass of some sort to tarred paper, or any other im- 

 pervious substance, under which, action injurious to the 

 bark and the. tree might be set up. All kinds of 

 substances are being tried, but whatever is adopted the 

 jirocess is pretty expensive. Has any one tried a 

 felting of jute waste? The Superintendent of Abbots- 

 ford has recently utilized the long stalks of gladioli 

 which grow luxuriantly along the sides of paths. Strips 

 of leaves of aloes, New Zealand ffax, and many other 

 plants could be tmned to account. The gieat point is 

 not to use string which passing loolies can steal. 

 Plant-fibres wffl answer. We have heard of good success 

 with strips of brown paper, tied on with coir 

 fibres, single strand, but two or more knotted together. 

 The shaving is a simple and inexpensive process. The 

 expense is in the covering ; yet it pays amply. But to 

 go back a little. The eiiect of the recent feari'ully ab- 

 noi-mal south west monsoon — unusually windy as well as 

 unusually wet — was painfully manifest in the appearance 

 of the coflee on each side of the Dimbula Gap, especially 

 on the Kotmalie side. No such effects of weather had 

 been witnessed previously since "the forest piimeval " 

 had given place to coffee. Not only were the branches 

 forced upwards, but the whole of tin; foliage, such as 

 it was, left on the trees was small, shi-ivelled and of 

 a pale yellow colour, just the colom- which distmguishes 

 a flush of best Assam hybrid tea. And this leads me 

 to the fact that in its superior power of resistiui' wind 

 lies the superiority of tea to coflee, cinchonas and most 

 other products. About a month ago a planter wTote 

 that practically the whole of the cinchona plants put 

 out were killed off' by the chilly wet, and another gentle- 

 man calculates his losses of ledgers and robustrs over 

 a clearing of Oiirty acres as at least one-third of what 

 he put out. This was fi'oiu wind laden with w et. The 

 contrast iu the case of very extensive plantings of tea 

 OH Abbotifoid tUs jear is T«i> BU'ikiug, n^t one per 



