January i, 1883.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



575 



years to reproduce it. If this be tlie case, there is 

 reason ti> fear that, even if we can kill the fungus 

 it may take a long time for trees to shake off the 

 aftcr-effi'cts of it. 



As to the .'iction of cwbolic, it surely is not unreason- 

 able to suppose tliat it should be as fatal to this as to 

 any other form of fuug'iid growth. Too much time ap- 

 pears to me to have been wasied by specialists in trying to 

 track its effects on t'ie fungus by the microscope. Ihey 

 look for results in tlie form of disease on the leaf, 

 whereas, ic is only while absorbed in minute particles 

 in the atmosphere that the poison can be dealt with. 

 In this they attempt to go a step further than the 

 surgeon who is quite satislied with ascertaining that 

 the disease spores floating in the air ('! which a cross 

 ray of sunlight can alone reveal to us) are the germs 

 that poison a wound and that the action of the car- 

 bolic spray reduces their faiality by 90 per cent. I 

 pr sunie that the advocates of the carbolic treatment 

 of leaf-disease claim no greater success for it than 

 this and it would be as well that such a possibility 

 slionld be reported on some better grounds than have 

 as yet been brought forward. — Yours truly, 

 E. H. SKRINE. 



CROPPING LAND FREQUENTLY AND THE 

 RESULT. 

 Dear Sir, — Fancy land giving thirteen and fourteen 

 crops a year. The Ceylon coffee planter takes thir- 

 teen and fourteen crops a year off his land, twelve 

 of weeds and one and in some rlistricts two of cofTee. 

 Will not that land in a very few years become im- 

 poverished, and impoverished land can only produce 

 impoverished .sap and that sap produce disease, and 

 a cure is expected not by cultivation but by magic, 

 a puff of sulphur or a sniff of carbolic acid. The 

 idea that " one could not grow weeds and coffee" 

 should have been, we could not take crops of weeds 

 and C)ff.e out of our laud. Ask any of the old re- 

 sidents in Nuwara Eliya, bow many crops of po- 

 tatoes, they can take off good rich forest land 

 before the potatoes become diseased, and ask them if 

 the potatoes do not become smaller and smaller with 

 each succeeding crop, till the land will produce 

 notliing but diseased potatoes. Now, will you ask any 

 of Tour readers that have a suitable glass shade, to 

 try the following experiment:— Get a pot or a bucket, 

 fill with pure sand (taking care to wash the sand 

 three or four times to make sure that it is nothiu" 

 but sand) plant a good healthy coffee plant in it, 

 cover over with a glass shade and water the plant 

 plentifully with filtered water, keep in a sharly place 

 for a week and then put pot and all in the open 

 and see how long it take.) for that plant to become 

 diseased taking care to water continually. — Yours 

 truly, G. R HALLILEY. 



[The obvious reply is that the weeds, though up- 

 rooted, are not removed from the land but are left 

 on it to rot. By no permissible license of words 

 can this he called taking crops from the land,— Ed.] 



THE " GUM LEAF-DISEASE " : DR. TRIMEN DID 

 NOT ATTRIBUTE IT TO A FUNGUS. 

 Royal Botanical Gardens, Peradeniya, 



13ih Dec. 1S82. 

 Sir,— Your correspondent, Mr. E. H. Skrine (page 574), 

 cannot have read my report on the disease of eucalypts 

 and other trees with any sort of attention, or he could 

 not say, as he does in his letter which you printed 

 yesterday, that I attributed it to a " fungus." 



Surely, I made my opinion to the exact contrary 

 as plain as possible. But it is a little disappointing 

 to find that it has been possible for any one to credit 

 me with precisely the opposite view to that I wished 

 to express. — I am, yours faithfully, 



HENRY TRIMEN. 



MR. HALLir.EYS PLEA FOR WEEDS AS 

 CONSERVING MOISTURE. 



Dear Sir, — Now that I suppose some of your 

 readers are trying the experiments, that I suggested, 

 will you try an experiment ; it will not take you five 

 minutes : take a tumbler, a small tube and a piece of 

 bread, put the bread into the tumbler and try and 

 suck the goodness out of the bread through the tube. 

 I do not suppose yon can and no more can the coffee 

 tiee, suck the goodness out of the soil, without 

 moi-ture, and if it cannot do this, it cannot get a suf- 

 ficient quantity of food for its suoport and then its 

 growth is not only checked, but thrown back and if 

 continued, ihe tree would die ; now pour sortie water 

 on the bread and see how easily you can suck the 

 goodness of the bread with the water. It is the 

 same with the coffee tree, so that the chief thing 

 the coffee wants, is moisture and to conserve that 

 moisture, we must sliade the soil, and the best thing 

 for shading is weeds, as they ab.sorb any superabund- 

 ance of moisture and in the blo-ssoming season, would 

 thus prereut our blossom going to either wood or 

 brush. Now what is it to be, weeds or no weeds ? — 

 Yours truly, G. F. HALLILEY. 



[One of our most experienced planters said to us 

 recently " Whatever may be the case with tea cultiva- 

 tion, it will not answer in the case of coffee to allow 

 the weeds grow and then hoe or fork the ground." 

 Let ns remind Mr. Halliley that it is from excess of 

 moisture our coffee has recently been ailing. — Ep.] 



TROPICAL AGRICULTURE AND ECONOMIC 

 PRODU'TS. 



Kew, Oct. 28th, 18S2. 



Dear Sir,^I am really much obliged to you for 

 your courtesy in sending me the first volume of your 

 very remarkable publication, the Tropical Agricul- 

 turist. I have read at the numbers which have coine 

 into my hand as yet with the greatest interest, as. I 

 found in the pages an immense amount of inforin- 

 ation as to the progress of tropical colonial industries 

 to which I have no convenient access elsewhere. 



In accordance with your request I send you a series 

 of the Kew Reports as complete as I can get 

 together. The Government print a very small number 

 of these documents. Of some we have not a single 

 spare copy left, of others I am sending actually the 

 hast we have to give away. I should advise you to 

 have them bound just as they are, as most of them we 

 cannot replace. 



I have sometimes thought that it would be a good 

 plan if we could reprint the portions rel.ating to econ- 

 omic products in a digested from — taking a leaf out 

 of your book in fact. — Believe me. yours faithfully 

 W. T. THISTLETON DYER. 



WHAT AILS OUR COFFEE TREES ? 



Dear Sir, — Here are a "baker's dozen" of ailments- 



1. — Leaf disease — This accursed fnngu's will always 

 be considered the primary cause of the failure of crops. 

 If it will not kill the trees outright in time, it will 

 cause their death indirectly. The only thing likely to 

 check the disease is to cut out all shuck trees on 

 estates and in native gardens and to keep good fields 

 of coffee isolated from the rest by cutting out bells, 

 as if stopping a tire, and planting these belts h ii h a dense 

 hedge and hreakwind. Large trees, such as cinchona, 

 should he grown closely amongst all coffee to keep off 

 spores as much as possible from blowing on to the coffee. 



2. — Old age. — We cannot expect fruit-bearing trees 

 like coffee, made to bear artificially by being topjjed, to 

 last /or ecer, in poor worn-out soil. 



.3.- GrK^. — Old coffee will not recover after a bad 

 attack of grub, I have pulled out trees with one 



