144 



<THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[August i, 1884. 



by Government order it has been notified to the Directors 

 of the Local Board of Administration to obtain information 

 regarding the distribution, the production and the product 

 of this as well as of the Kairet andjiv)ig referred to above, 

 it will soon appear whether the expectations entertained 

 by Teijsmann will be fulfilled. 



(iii) K<tret pantjai. — Bantam. — This is according to Hass- 

 karl the native name for Sideroxylon attenuatum, which, 

 according to statements of Teijsmann, yields a gutta like 

 that of the two abovenamed. 



Recorded by Teijsmann (.Nat. tijdsetr., Pt. I, p. 4P7):— 



(iv) Tundjom/. — Lowlands. — Mimusops Menyi. — This more 

 familiar plant yiolds a grey gutta of inferior quality. 



(v) Sawo. — Lowlands. — Mimusops mam.ilka.ra. Yields a 

 gutta like the foregoing. 



(vi) Saveo Manilla. — Introduced. — Sapota achras or West 

 Indian medlar; introduced from the "West Indies into Java. 

 The gutta is light brown in color, elastic and supple in 

 water but hard and brittle when cold. 



(vii) Djenykot. — Buitenzorg, '&c. — Bessia sericca. — This 

 yields a pure white gutta which is not so brittle as the 

 preceding. 



(viii) Getah Pankalar, Getah Kiara, Getah Keridang, 

 Getuh Tierop, Getah Etiiberang. — The five lastnamed varieties 

 of gutta-percha were sent from the Preanger Regencies to 

 the International Exhibition at Paris ; I find nothing stated 

 however regarding the comparative value and the appear- 

 ance of the product. 

 June 1S83. 



After the conclusion of my investigation in the Padang 

 hilleountry, I hope to be able to furnish further partic- 

 ulars on this question. 



MORE ABOUT TEA. 



Iu the Home and Colonial Mail of June 20 we find 

 a far more extended report of the meeting of the 

 Assam Tea Company, which we drew attention to the 

 other day ; and though we still maintain that the 

 theory of the Chairman that "manuring would do 

 the tea-plant little good" is an absurd one, we in 

 fairness to him give his reasons for thinking so. He 

 said that " he looked upon the tea-plant as a forest 

 tree, and not an ordinary shrub or ilower or plant 

 which grew upon shallow ground. It sent its roots 

 down as the chesnut or the ash. He mentioned those 

 two trees because they were treated iu this country 

 very much as tbe tea-plant was treated in India. 

 Some sixty years ago William Cobbet suggested that 

 ehe°nut and ash should be grown in Kent and Sussex 

 for hop-poles, and the way this was dotffe was to 

 plant them a certain distance apart, and after a time 

 they were cut down, and from the stem or stool 

 grew up the poles, which were cut every ten years. 

 His experience of tea was somewhat similar to his 

 experience of chesnut and ash-growing. The tea-plant 

 was cut down, and from the suckers which spring up 

 the leaves were plucked, and there was reason to 

 believe that the roots of the tea-plant grew deeply 

 into the ground, and that manuring would do it 

 little good." 



Our own experience is that the tap-root of the tea-plant 

 goes down at least six or eight feet into the subsoil (we 

 heard of its penetrating cabook and of splitting its 

 way through the fissure of a rock), and we have 

 seen lateral roots as thick as a man's thumb extending 

 fully twelve feet away from the parent stem : does 

 it not, therefore, stand to reason that a plant, 

 whose own roots so largely open up the ground, 

 should be one of the readiest to respond to manure, 

 which at the first show r of ruin would find its way 

 in a liquid form along the rout itself down to the 

 very lowest depth to which the latter had penetrated, 



although, of course the tree is feci chiefly from the 

 smaller rootlets. The uudoubted success which 

 attended the burying of the prunings on a small 

 portion of our estate last year has led us this year 

 to go to the expense of burying everything over the 

 whole pruned acreage. The result, we confidently 

 anticipate, will be an increase of over 100 lb. made 

 tea per acre, which was the result secured from the 

 first burying. 



The Chairman, in answer to Mr. Seton, a Cachar 

 planter, who said that he had found it advantageous 

 to manure accompanied by- a deep hoeing, replied 

 that it would be an absolute impossibility for this 

 company to manure its 7,500 acres in Assam." Mr. 

 Albert B. Fisher (a director), said :—" I have tried it 

 in As?am. I acknowledge the utility of manuring, 

 but the difficulty of doing it on a large soale is 

 very great, and the growth of weeds which spriflgs 

 up where the manure is used also causes very great 

 difficulty." Of course the growth of weeds is an objec- 

 tion, but a very, small one when the end iu view is taken 

 into consideration. The Chairman himself had at the 

 commencement of the discussion stated that they were 

 only producing 3501b. per acre, but that he should not 

 be satisfied, if he lived, unlets he saw the gardens 

 yield at least 500 lb. to the acre. We suspect he would 

 see that and more if orders were given for manur- 

 ing, though, of course, the deep, rich soil of Assam 

 does not need assistance so much as our comparat- 

 ively poor soil in Ceylon does. The following ex- 

 tract is interesting as showing the size to which tha 

 tea-tree will grow, aud as refuting a suggestion that 

 was put forward last year at the Dimbula Planters' 

 Association Meeting that tea made from old plants 

 would be lacking in flavour. The Chairman said : — 

 With respect to this company's experience, the share- 

 holders were aware that we were the pioneers of tea cult- 

 ivation in India. We took over some experimental gardens 

 from the old East India Company. Those gardens were 

 formed in consequence of a certain Mr. Bruce, who went 

 to Assam, having discovered, or believing that he had 

 discovered, the indigenous tea plant but which we now 

 believe to have been the remains of old tea plantations 

 which were planted at a time when Assam was iu a much 

 higher state of civilization than when this company en- 

 tered upon the gardens. Those trees were growing in 

 patches ; they were actually trees. He had one stump 

 sent home to him, which was as large in circumference 

 as a hat. This company never made such good, strong, 

 and well-flavoured tea as during the first three or four 

 years of its working from these old forest trees, which 

 had been growing there for probably hundreds of years, 

 and which were subsequently cut down, and from the 

 stumps of which grew up the young plantations from 

 which the Assam Company made their first importation. 

 An ordinary top-hat is about 26 inches in cir- 

 cumference : on Abbotsford we have measured 

 a tea-stem 22 inches round, so that there ia 

 abundance of testimony that the tea-trees haB found 

 a congenial home in Ceylon, and that on leav- 

 ing Assam it did not say, as the majority of our 

 coolies do on leaving their simei, " Poyittu varcn" 

 (I go and come again), but "Poyittu nirkiren" (I go 

 to stay). 



The Assam Company have only just ordered machin- 

 ery ; the reason given for the delay was that the Di- 

 rectors had been waiting for a perfect machine to be 

 produced before expeiimcuting with untried inventions 

 They might have gone on till Doomsday pursuing 

 this short sighted policy and waiting for what will 

 certaiuly never be produced in this world, a perfect 

 machine, had they not been stirred up by finding that 

 young, ably managed companies with only one-twelfth 

 or one-eighth of their out-put eould produce leaf at 

 a less expense per pound than the Assam Company. 



In taking over the following statistics we would 

 draw attention to the two remarkable facts that the 



