33° 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 



[October i, 1884. 



THE PURE WINKS OF AUSTRALIA. 

 To those who drink wine— and they are still many in 

 the face of temperance and tea agitation— it is of 

 great importance that the beverages they partake of 

 should be pure and unsophisticated and not doctored 

 and drugged and deteriorated hy the addition of more 

 alcohol than nature provides should be developed in 

 the process of grape feinientaliou. The vastmajority 

 of the Australian wines are good and pure, and all that 

 is necessary to render them acceptable is that they 

 should be old enough to have lost all trace of fusel 

 oil and to have acquired the full and delicate bouquet, 

 so much desiderated by connaisseurs in wine. Sam- 

 ples of such pure wiues, five years in bottle at the 

 least, have been brought to Colombo by an agent of 

 Messrs. Caldwell & Co., of 114, Collins Street West, 

 Melbourne. They include clarets which tastere, not 

 knowing the origin of the wines, have frequently 

 preferred to the best French clarets at three times the 

 price. If there is any difference it ib that the Victorian 

 claret is less acid than the wines imported from 

 Bordeaux. There is a port, so called, which ought in the 

 case of invalids and. for sacramental purposes, to super- 

 sede the generally fiery and manufactured wines for 

 which Portugal has been so long famed. There is 

 also an excellent red Hermitage and a sweet Muscat, 

 a perfect ladies' wine. Next to the clarets, how. 

 ever, opinion is likely to incline in favour of the 

 wines called Chablis and Hochheimer, the latter 

 slightly stronger and with a more pronounced bitter 

 than the former. There are other wines all good 

 in their way : Verdeilho or Madeira, Tokay, R-is- 

 ling (recommended by a medical committee), Con- 

 s tan tin, Shiraz, Frontignac aud Cabinet (recommended 

 by a medical committee tor young people, where 

 wine as a tonic may be prescribed). But »e should 

 think that the run would be specially on the clarets, 

 of which thtre are three qualities, and on the 

 t hablis aud hocks as white wines. If something 

 more approaching sherry is wanted, there is the Keisling 

 which is somewhat warmer and fuller than the 

 Chablis and hocks. Wine cannot be made without 

 the fermenting process (" new wine must not be 

 put into old skins"), and during fermentation a 

 certain amount of alcohol must be developed. But, 

 if wines with no higher degree of alcohol had ever 

 been used than characterizes these Australian wines, 

 we believe intemperance would never have made such 

 headway as to demand the stringent remedy of 

 total abstinence. Wn by no means desire those 

 who do not use wine, either on principles of 

 high expediency or because they can " get along " 

 very well without i>, to become wine-bibbers. 

 But to the large class who believe that good wine 

 in moderation is a good thing, we can recommend 

 the pure, light Victorian wines. 



OEYLON AND ITS PLANTING INDUSTRIES. 



TO THE EDITOR OP THK TIMES. 



Sir,— Ceylon and its planters have been several times 

 referred to in the discussion in the Thiii's on the pro- 

 spects of sugar cultivation in the West Indies, and per- 

 haps a brief risuvhi of the experience gained in the 

 Eastern colony during a series of trying years may 

 be of some interest and of service to planters elsewhere. 



It is pretty well-known how in the course of 40 years, 

 from 1837 onwards, Ceylon rose from being a mere 

 military dependency (involving a considerable annual 

 burden to the mother country) to the position of the 

 first and wealthiest of British Crown colonies. During 

 that perio.l its population, revenue, and trade so steadily 

 advanced that they well-nigh excelled those of all the 

 West Indian colonies put together. The change was 

 due almost entirely to ihe development of coffee-plant- 



ing, which gave in the heyday of prosperity as much in 

 one year as £5,(100,000 sterling worth into the markets 

 of the world, chiefly through London. Other branches of 

 agriculture prospered and advanced during those 40 years 

 such as palm tree, cinnamon and rice cultivation in the 

 low country — coffee being grown on the hills — in the 

 hands of the Sinhalese and Tamils. But it was through 

 the capital introduced and the revenue created by coffee 

 that the natives wore enabled to extend their groves of 

 coconut and palmyra palms, and that the Government 

 could devote large sums to the restoration and con- 

 struction of irrigation works, more particularly in sup- 

 plying village sluices and tanks where the people were 

 ready to make use of them. 



So far as European colonists were concerned coffee- 

 planting almost exclusively claimed their attention, and 

 many of the Siuhaleee also embarked in this enterprise. 

 While it continued profitable the counsels of those who 

 advocated the cultivation of other products was treated 

 as so much idle breath. Theoretically it was shown many 

 years ago that the climate and much of the soil of Ceylon 

 were better suited for tea than coffee ; but still the feiliug 

 aud clearing of the |inost beautiful and varied tropical 

 forests in the world went on until from 40O to 500 square 

 miles of country were covered with the one shrub, Coffea 

 Arabica, carefully planted, aud scientifically pruned — top- 

 ped at the height of an average gooseberry bush. Nature 

 was, however, preparing the punishment of a gross viol- 

 ation of her laws — one paralleled by the would-be de- 

 pendence of the Irish 40 years ago on potatoes, by the 

 cultivation in other countries of too wide and unbroken 

 an area of wheat, or of the vine. The penalty in Cey- 

 lon was first manifested in 1S09, in a minute fungus on 

 the leaf, parallel more or less to the oulittm in the vine, 

 rust in wheat, and the potato disease. For some seven or 

 eight years not much was thought of it, save as an in- 

 ducement to more liberal, careful cultivation ; but the 

 scientists called in to investigate showed that little or no 

 practical check could be offered, and within 15 years, to 

 make a long story short, the minute, despised fungus 

 had swept 100,000 acres of coffee cultivation out of ex- 

 istence — the poorly cultivated native gardens and poorer 

 plantations being naturally the first to be abandoned. 

 At the same time the export of the coffee bean fell last 

 year to one-fourth the maximum of 1,(100,000 cwt. Here 

 was certainly a grave national misfortune overtaking a 

 body of industrious men who had been the mainstay of 

 a country's prosperity, ami, moreover, their difficulties 

 were aggravated by an extraordinary development of coffee 

 production in Brazil. This was due to the interior of that 

 South American Empire being rapidly opened up by rail- 

 ways made out of borrowed money ; the labour, at the 

 same time, used in opening fresh coffee plantations be- 

 ing slave. Such competition might be deemed unfair — 

 more particularly as it has taken 12 years' agitation in Cey- 

 lon to secure an extension of less than 100 miles of railway 

 from the Colonial Office ; but, in place of looking to 

 the Government for factitious aid, the Ceylon planters 

 ten years ago turned their attention to new products with 

 all the energy and intelligence for which they are famous 

 beyond any other tropical cultivators. 



In many cases, of course, the new products, such as cin- 

 chena, tea, cacao 'chocolate), and rubber, were experimented 

 with as supplementary to the 175,000 acres of select coffee 

 still maintained in cultivation, and let it be noted that 

 ill interspersing his coffee fields with cinchona aud rubber 

 trees, in planting belts or boundaries of such, or areas of 

 reserve in tea. the planter v as using one of the best 

 meaus of checkiug the free dissemination of the fungus 

 (hemUein vastatria). As a consequence possibly, or perhaps 

 the virulence of this pest is abating, during the current 

 season Oeyloo is giving an improved crop of coffee, the 

 export beiug in excess of last year's by probably 100.000 cwt. 



At the same time, the productions of tea and cinchona 

 bark have become established and important industries. 

 The export of the latter this year will probably be equal 

 to 10,000,000 1b. against the beginning in 1889 with 28 oz. 

 Nor is it expected that South America can ever again com- 

 pete with the East — Ceylon, India, and Java — in the pro- 

 duction of the invaluable febrifuge. 



Again, it is acknowledged on all hands now that Oeylon 

 is better adapted to become a great tea-producing country 

 than ever it was to lead with coffee. Situated in the path. 



