December i, 1882.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST 



49SI 



the roots of the tree ; otherwise forking does harm tiy 

 destroying a lot of the feeders. lu former days, if a 

 planter expected a field to bear a good crop, he did not 

 prune it, as most likely he depended on that field for 

 the bulk of his crop. Hnudliug was epiite enough for 

 that field : what pruning was done, was done by picked 

 men. Nonadays every man, woman and child that 

 can carry a knife is put on to prune, without regard to 

 climate or condition. In a hot, forcing climate, it is the 

 best thing possible to prune as early as can be 

 done, as the rebound of the sap forceil out wood, 

 that wood blossomed and bore crop. In a colder 

 climate, wood takes a year, and sometimes more, before 

 it will blossom, so that any early pruning that is 

 done should be done, not for the coming crop, but 

 with regard to the crop to follow. It is a great 

 mistake, when a piece of fine coffee, in a cool climate, 

 is going to give a heavy crop, to prune it early, to 

 prevent its over- bearing. The rebound of the .sap is 

 wood, so that the trees bear wood instead of crop, 

 and most of the manure ia cut off and the balance 

 gone to wood. If there is not the means of backing 

 that crop, prune after the blossoming season, and cut 

 off as much crop as necessary, and it should be re- 

 membered that the leaves of a tree are the most 

 important part to the tree : they are not only the 

 breathing organs of the tree, but also the stomach. 

 The sap is sent up through the wood to the leaves 

 and is converted by them into proper eap or cam- 

 bium and sent down by the inner bark, and is the 

 real nourishment of the tree ; so that in cutting away 

 a lot of young wood so much of the breathing and 

 digestive powers of the tree have been taken 

 away and the tree must restore the.se first. If a 

 person gets a tine piece of land, sticks cofi'ee into 

 it, and get good crops, I do not consider that he 

 deserves any credit. Any one can do the same and 

 it is what most of the natives did, till their laud 

 became exhausted. A planter ought to know how to 

 assist uature and not leave nature to do everything 

 for him. At one time coffee used to be produced for 

 4O3 per cwt, and with means to cultivate properly it 

 can be done again, and now that we know " what 

 ails our coffee ", we know bow to keep it up, — 

 Yours truly, O. F. HALLILEY. 



"WHAT AILS OUR COFFEE:" "ENDOGEN- 

 OUS" AND "EXOGENOUS" TREES. 

 Dear Sir, — In case some of your readers may not 

 be able to understand some of the statements I have 

 made, I write another letter and trust this will suffice. 

 Trees are divided into two sections, endogenous and 

 exogenous. Endogenous, such as palms, sugarcane 

 &c. , grow from seed of one lobe, and increase in girth 

 from the inside, their life and growth is limited : wo 

 have several examples in Ceylon, such as, the talipot, 

 the kitul and what is most familiar to us all, the 

 plantain : we know that when the heart of the tree 

 comes out in flower and it matures its fruit, its life is 

 ended and though through growing in better soil, some 

 of them may get a great deal larger in stem and 

 height, still they cannot get beyond a certain limit. 

 Exogenous are trees thnt grow from, se^d of two lobes 

 and have no limit to their life or growth, as if the 

 world was constituted differently to what it is and 

 was a ball of rich soil, an exogenous tree would go 

 on growing till the roots came out on the other side 

 and would only die because they had no more soil to 

 grow in lui-l can any one limit the growth of tliat 

 tree ? It has been suggested that disciiaes are 

 contagious : the thing is preposterous, if such 

 a thing were posiible there would not only 

 be no tree on the earth, but no green thing ; 

 insects may spread, but such a thing as disease is im- 

 possible ; the inrtuence of weather on impoverished sap 



is the only cause of supposed contagious disease. Thus, 

 for instance, when a piece of cinchona dies out, why 

 does it leave patches ? Merely because those patches 

 have the required amount of t/K food of the tree, 

 and it has been found that land where cinchona has 

 died on will not grow cinchona again. Why? Because 

 it has not the necessary food for cfuchona, and, to 

 replace the elements to allow the cinchona to grow, 

 we would have to find out s mie manure that would 

 produce quinine, if such a thing could bo found. I 

 have no doubt that the chemist would extract it 

 cheaper than we could, liy giowiug cinchona. Imper- 

 fect flowers have been mentioned. In a reathj healthy 

 coffee tree, such things are almost impossible ; imperfect 

 flowers are abortions and such can only be produced 

 by weakness, disease or both combined, such a thing 

 might also happen after the berries have formed, to 

 a weak sickly or diseased tree, by some shock to 

 the system from causes explained in my other letters, 

 but to a really healthy tree it could not occur. 

 Coffee (unlike cinchona and gums) has been supplied 

 by nature with a provision (but for which Dr. 

 Thwaites' prediction would have come true), and that 

 is as soon as the sap is disorganized, the tree either 

 shakes its leaves off or the leaves drop off of their 

 own accord, but it is a cert.ainty, that if these leaves 

 instead of dropping off, had sent the sap down by 

 the inner bark, there would not be now enongh coffee 

 trees to supply the V. A.'s with walking sticks. 

 Now what do you and your readers think of coffee 

 and of " what ails our coffee ?" — Yours truly, 



G. F. HALLILEY. 



VINE CULTURE IN CEYLON. 



Colombo, Nov. 9th, ]882. 



Dear Sib, — I observe that you in a footnote to my 

 letter of yesterday suggest, that the wine sent to 

 Spilbergen and his companions by the KingofKandy 

 was the produce of the coconut. Tliia is totally in- 

 consistent with the original. The word "drul/'" trans- 

 lated by me as vine ia strictly speaking "gpipe" whereas 

 the equivalent for coconut in Dutch is " k'.appiis." 



That the vine attains a considerable size in Kandy, 

 even at the present date, may be proved to the satisfac- 

 tion of any one interested. At the back of the 

 Kandy jail is a very fine specimen. It used to yield 

 large crops in the time of Mr. Braybrooke, but has 

 not done so since the jailer, in his anxietv to increase 

 the supply, buried a cart-load of dogs (obtained 

 through the police in the dog-killing days) at its 

 roots. The manurewas evidently too stimulating though 

 probably a pariah or two might have proved highly 

 beneficial. 



The secret in vine culture in Ceylon seems to 

 consist in knowing what is the best season in each 

 locality to submit the plants to an artificial wintering 

 by liiying bare the roots, and also the correct period 

 over which such wintering should extend. Surely some 

 coiTcspondent in the Northern Province conld Rive us 

 through your columns, the required iuformation as far as 

 Jaffna is concerned. — Yours faithfully, BLANK. 



WEEDS ENRICHING AND SHADING THE 

 SOIL 

 Dumbara, 14th November 1882. 



Dear Sir,— The editorial " Oh 1 Oh!" to the con- 

 trary notwithstanding, it appears to me that Mr. H.alli- 

 ley is justified in his statement that weeds enrich 

 the sorl (if not removed from it. always understood), 

 while coffee exhausts it ; as weeds, allowed to orow 

 mature, and die donn on the same spot, must return 

 to the soil with interest whatever they have taken 

 from ii, whereas the most soil-exhausting part of the 

 coffee plant, the seed, is systematically removed. Be- 



