6io 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[January i, 1883. 



pruning, and also whether it is in vigorous growth c r not. 

 \Vhere the top is exceptionally vigorous and inclined to 

 run to wood use the knife most sparingly ; where it is 

 wanting in vigour either cut it till you can urge it to 

 make wood, or apply some fertiliser that will force it to 

 do so, and even then prune heavUy. The hest pruning for 

 any tree running too :nuch into wood is at the roots ; 

 cut them to check it, and the tree will bear, and that 

 is the only pruning for fruit in such cases.* Then there 

 are trees which bear from the extreme points of the shoots, 

 such as the mango, whampee, litchee, and many others ; 

 of course these mu.st have special pruning or there will 

 be no fruit. Unless points are left somewhere to break 

 into bloom the tree will be a failure, but it do is not fol- 

 low that you must always leave the leading points. Where- 

 ever the symmetry and general balance of the tree will 

 allow of it do so, but when these are much interfered 

 with shorten the branches back to some of the laterals, 

 and leave these to do the work. In other respects just 

 simply carry out the rule already given of admitting a 

 free circulation of air and light everywhere among the 

 branches by a judicious thiuning of the poorest, weake.st, 

 and most iil-placed wood. Then there is the orange and 

 citrus family generally, which bear on the wood of the 

 previous year's growth. The best general directions for 

 pruning these is to subject the whole tree to a careful 

 thinniug.t not forgetting the one great point — the balance 

 of the tree and its symmetry. This general rule is a good 

 one for a much wider application; in fact, the amateur 

 pruner may act upon it in a general way without doing 

 much harm. Then there is pruning the vine for fruit. 

 Vine pruning/is a speciality in itself and deserves separ- 

 ate treatment, but the following directions must suffice 

 in this connection. Like the peach it bears upon the wood 

 of the previous season, and enough of this must be left 

 to produce the crop and no more. In cutting the vine 

 every eudeavour to keep old wood from increasing at the 

 base of the branches must be maintained, and the more 

 thoroughly to renew the plant new wood may be allowed 

 to break out and grow occasionally from where the tree 

 began to branch originally ; by this means all but the 

 main stem may be from time to time renewed. In other 

 respects .shorten all the bearing wood to within two or 

 three eyes of the point of starting and cut clean out all 

 small and worthless wood. A good knife or a handy pair 

 of French priudng shears will do the work very expedi- 

 tiously, and wlicn it is well done you can reckon on a 

 4)aying crop of good fruit, but neglected vines are profit- 

 less. — Queenslanier. 



TEA :— PACKING. 



As our statement about tea being possibly damaged by 

 " six or seven days' e.'iposure on the swampy platform at 

 Sara," is likely to be misconstrued into an attempt to 

 place all the blame on the shoulders of the railway ; we 

 beg leave to correct that statement to a certain extent, 

 for we hold that, if the contents of a chest, which is 

 outwardly souud, is damaged by exposure for two or three 

 days on a damp platform, the fault is entirely the manager's, 

 or whoever had to attend to the packing, at the factory. 

 We repeat again, most emphatically, the substance of an 

 ardcle on the subject in a former number of this paper 

 (No. 15, page 250,) that the present .system of firing tea 

 is a mistake. If planters cannot carry out in its entirety, 

 the old system of " jjakka hath/" (although we see no 

 reason why they cannot) they must invent a method of 

 carrying out the object of the '•pukka liatti/," i.e., a perfect 

 ami thorough drying of the tea prior to packing. Had the 

 tea we referred to been tlwrovyhly dried, and packed 

 (as tea ought always to be packed) in air-tight lead-lined 

 cases, hot from the fires, a six days' exposure of the 

 chests, or a six years' exposure for that matter, would 

 in no way atfect-the tea. But they were no doubt packed, 

 as the generality of consignments are packed, hy the tea- 

 house sirdar, a person not at all likely to know anything 



* The grubs act as root-pruners for our coffee in Cey- 

 lon, bivt unfortunately they overdo the work an 1 so help 

 the fungus to lessen or altogether prevent fruit.— Ed. 



f Which we have seen denounced as hurtful to the 

 orange in Australia at any rate. — Ed. 



of the importance of having a perfectly air-tight case for 

 the tea. It was probably just taken out of the bins, anyhow, 

 perhaps with the inevitable " secondary fermentation " 

 of imijerfectly dried tea just beginning its work ; very 

 likely on a damp, perhaps rainy day, weighed up by 

 one of the coolies ; and after being packed, carelessly 

 soldered, nailed down, marked, and sent off ; and as it 

 is a notorious fact (at least all the " old style " of planters 

 knew it,) that teamen are perfectly indifferent to any holes 

 in the lead hnlng of a chest caused by obstructive nails, 

 and stray splinters of wood, it is just possible that even 

 if the tea was good when it left the factory, the holes in 

 the lead case allowed damp to get at the tea, and so 

 ruined the contents of every chest long before it arrived 

 at Sara. 



Teamen, told off to solder linings of chest, have been 

 known to pass the soldering iron over the overlapping 

 edges of the lead sheets, without using a grain of solder 

 in the operation, and then calmly pointing to the rosin- 

 cemented edges as' being perfectly joined aud .sound ! 

 These little failings of our Aryan brother, together with 

 his constitutional weakness for procrastination and scamping, 

 made " packing days " days of extraordinarily hard work 

 for the "old style" of planter. He examined every chest 

 himself before it was lined ; he examined it again after 

 it was lined ; and again once more after the tea was packed 

 and the lead cover soldered on and before the box lid 

 was nailed down. The day before packing, he had had 

 samples out of each bin (if more than one bad to be 

 emptied), each sample was carefully examined, aud if all 

 were sound, the contents of all were poured out at the 

 same time on a large bulking sheet, and throughly and 

 carefully bulked. In the meantime, the " batty " fires were 

 got ready, and sieves of tea were 'thoroughly " battyed " 

 for at least 24 hours before packing. After the tea was 

 thoroughly dried, it was weighed as quickly as po-ssible, and 

 packed hot and hot into the chests, and soldered up at 

 once. I have known planters to keep tea three days on 

 the fires, because the tea sirdar (who used generally to 

 attend to this himself) could not solder up the chests 

 fast enough on the second day. Tea was never filled into 

 a chest, anil then allowed to lie in the factory till the 

 next day before it was soldered up, as is done now-a-days. 

 No, when the "old style" of planter began packing, it 

 was packing, aud nothing else ; when he was trausplanting 

 it, he did that as thoroughly, standing over the coolies 

 doing it, from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m., takiug his "peg" and 

 his " grub " out in the garden just where he happened to 

 be when it came, and so on in everything. Of course, 

 we cannot say that a man must be able to live a rough- 

 and-ready semi-savage life to be a good and successful 

 planter. But we certainly hold to the opinion that a 

 manager, alone on, say, a hundred acre garden, in full 

 bearing, has enough work to keep him fully employed 

 fourteen hours out of every twentyfour during the whole 

 'of the manufacturing season ; and if a man cannot do that, 

 he ought not to take to tea planting as a livelihood, 

 unless he has money enough to purchase a large share in the 

 concern, and so take a large share of the lasses that are 

 sure to follow imperfect management. Our private opinion 

 is, that if a man has money enough to buy a large share 

 in a good tea estate, he would be a fool to go and live 

 there' and try to work it, unless he was, as it were, to 

 the manner born, and had ha'd a pretty long apprenticeship 

 in the bu.siness. 



But recenons a nos mouto7is, although we do not exonerate 

 the highly paid staff of the Northern Bengal Eailway at 

 Sara from the blame they justly deserve for their unreason- 

 able delay in forwarding packages on to their destination, 

 (for they ought to have been perfectly prepared for the 

 demands upon their rolling stock,) we wish proprietors 

 of estates and agents to bear in mind the mdisputable 

 fact, that good tea packed (as good tea ought always to 

 be packed)" perfectly dry, in an air-tight case, with sound 

 and strong outer case, cannot possibly spoil by a few days' 

 exposure on a railway platform. In fact, it is well known 

 that tea so packed will improve by keeping (see our remark 

 on this subject in our No. 2, page 21). Old planters (practical 

 tea-makers rather) used to say that good Indian tea was 

 unlit to drink till it was three mouth's old, aud only just 

 passable then ; after six months it was fairish ; after a year 

 drinkable ; after two years good ; and perfect only after 



