f64 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[January i, 1883. 



was weeded when I took it up and half pruned and well 

 pruned, but had not a single drain iu it, though it 

 was all ou a sloping hillside, and there were :.'50 

 acres of it, and thue tons and tons of the best soil 

 were periodically washed down to appoohamy's paddy- 

 fields below. The other place was almost level, but 

 covered all over with the goat weed of the large 

 kind and half as high as the coffee trees themselves, 

 This smaller estate needed little drainage and 

 was the more valuable and permanent one. It 

 stood in need greatly of hon°st pruning. We were 

 just finishing crop, and all tlie able men were told off 

 to prune, cut away all three years' secondaries 

 with their superaburdant branches, and to cut out 

 gormaudisers and get the 225 acres more or less in 

 form (150 men daily), which they soon did. The 

 inferior hands had to puU up the weeds by mam 

 force, put them ia heaps in lines and a strong podian 

 with a mamotie in hand buried thera down 

 below; one podian to each five rowe. This was the 

 plan, adopted without hesitation, and carried on for 

 many years on both places, for the places grew weeds 

 and coffee at the samet)me, and s«c7t co/ee— large, bold, 

 and colory ! !— and well distributed all over the estates. 

 Well, to cut the matter short : though we had 

 not contract weeding in those days and could not 

 weed at all in crop time by reason of very heavy 

 crops, in eight continuous years we had only one 

 small crop ou either place. These properties steadily 

 increasing their crops, I may say, almost doubling 

 them, proving, I think, that the lohtte wee'1, 

 periodically pulled up and buried, did not iujuru the 

 soil much. It was a green soil manuring, and, as 

 crop time was the rainy season, I always thou, lit 

 this living thatch of the goat weed broke the raini 11 

 and wash and saced the sinl in those rainy mouiha 

 Nevertheless, I adopted eventually the contract system 

 of weeding, as being cheaper, aud preventing coolies 

 hiding coffee in the long weeds and dropping cherry 

 when picking. Beferring to the estates afore alluded to 

 after S years' management, I may mention that the 

 smaller Tennie was sold for £10,000 sterling, cash down 

 on the uail, and on account of my recommendation 

 to the owner in London as being a most permanent 

 estate, and not subject to waste from wash, aud if 

 I could to modern coffee-planters say only one sweet 

 and last word, it is, take care ofyour soil. Drain well 

 and let the drains have mould traps, and the 

 lowest drain the largest trap, and let the soil be 

 basketed to the trees once or twice a year. More 

 in my next, on forking, manuring and root -pruning. 



F. C. P. 



the Company intended. The district is the home of 

 the wild caidainon. The Kilulgalla Aratchi, a Tamil 

 he,adinan of a Sinhalese village, owes his wealth to 

 collecting, purchasing and forwarding to India this 

 variety, which is much esteemed by the natives there, 

 being more pungent and suited for e.atmg with betel 

 and for real Madtassee curries- The average price 

 he told me was R130 per mound or some such weight of 

 about 601b. to GOlb.^ — I am yours faithfully, C. L. S. 



KOOKWOOD TEA AND TEA CLASSIFICATION. 

 Rook wood, Deltota, oth Dec. 1882. 

 Dear Mr. Editor, — Pour encourager leu aulres 

 I would be glad if you would coiTect the price of my 

 broken tea as quoted, ex " Dacca." It fetched Is 4^(1, 

 a very good price for what (for appearance) some 

 people (in Ceylon) call "rubbish." As you very justly 

 remark, it is impossible to make all pekoe. My bro- 

 ken tea is thus described : — " Blackish aud reddish 

 fannings, good flavour." Pekoe aud tea dust we can- 

 not help : broken and fannings we cannot help ; but 

 I fear that notwithstanding all that has been advised 

 in your columns as elsewhere, some of our tea-makers 

 will, to their own loss, sort into too many classes. 

 I take it, pekoe, broken pekoe, pekoe souchong, with 

 its pekoe dust, tea dust, and broken and fannings 

 jput through Reid's machine, to be about the right 

 thing. — I am, yours faithfully, 



C. SPEARMAN ARMSTRONG. 



TEA AND CARDAMOMS IN THE YAKDESSA 

 DISTRICT, CEYLON. 



30th November 1882. 

 Dear Sir,— I read with interest "T. S. T." 's letter 

 on tea iu Ceylon appearing in your issue of the 28th 

 instant. I visited the Yakdessa district in Iboy. 

 Yakdesea estate was then owned by a Mr. Swan 

 and managed by the late Mr. Whittaker. I was then 

 shewn a plot of 20 to 30 China three year old lea trees 

 flourishing grandly. A couple of years ago, I revisited 

 the place, after a lapse of 21 years and found two 

 tea trees still alive, though almost choked by lantana 

 and scrub. The surface roots had thrown up plants 

 and each tree formed a bush of 20 feet in circumference 

 The trees, strange to say, appear as 'f they had 

 been occasionally topped— perhaps by villagers when 

 searching -for waratcliies. About four year.^ ago, Mr. 

 Advocate Eaton, and his brother-in-law, Mr. Green, 

 now in Australia, endeavoured to get up a Conipiuy 

 amongst the native and Kurasiau gentry to plant this 

 proi'erty with tea, ciuchoua, &c. It is a pity it was 

 Sot a successful attempt. All round it there are 

 beautiful tea properties opened out much later than 



Artificial Graphite. — The Chevalier Jervis, Con- 

 servator of the Koyal Italian Industrial Museum at 

 Turin, has sent the Secretary n note upon a new 

 artifici d graphite, invented by an Italian named Conte. 

 The graphite is said to be chemically pure, and quite 

 homogeneous. It is crystalline, black, aud with a 

 metallic lustre. It is very elastic, and therefore con- 

 sidered tuital.le for incandescent lamps, tor which 

 purpose it has been tried, Signor Jervis reports tliat 

 it answers very satisfactorily. Lamps fitted with this 

 material have been sent to the Kkctrical Exhibition, 

 which is now open at Munich. — Journal of the Society 

 of Arts. 



Linnean. — Nov. 2 — Sir J. Lubbock, Bart., in the 

 chair. Mr. \V. T. Thiselton Dyer exhibited a specimen 

 of, and made remarks on, the plant producing Cassia 

 llynea, and on the native implements used iu the col- 

 lection and preijaration of the cassia bark in Southern 

 China. A paper was read 'On Medicinal Plants of 

 North-west Queensland,' by Mr. W. E. Armit. Amoiig 

 these are a species of Aristclochia and a crotou also 

 Grenia ■polygama, a specific for dysentery ; Careya 

 arborescens, used for poultices ; Erylhrece austratis aud 

 Andropogon citrivdora, tonics in febrile complaints; 

 and Euphorbia pihdinra aud Datura australis, valuable 

 in cases of asthma. — Loudon Athenceum. 



TuE Mad.\k Plant. — The Government of India have 

 addressed the local Oovemment on the subjict of the 

 manufacture of paper from the fibre of the Madar plant. 

 It appe.ars from letters enclosed that for the manu- 

 facture of paper the fibre is required only in the siiape 

 of thread, and that thi.s accounts for the great differ- 

 ence betwccu the cost in its preparation for cordage or 

 clotliing and fir paper. In Mr. Liotard's memorandum 

 on the materiais suitable for the nianufactuie of paper, 

 it is stated that the Madar plant is ustd in ihe Pesha- 

 war and Sirsa districts. Experiments have been tiied 

 with this fibre in the Punjab jails. The main fault 

 found with it was its ihinness ; t'tiis might have been 

 remedied, but this branch of maufacture cannot be 

 prosecuted in jails, as it would be antagonistic to the 

 views of the Government of India concerning jail manu- 

 factures recently enunciated. — Madras Mail, 



