420 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[November i, 1884. 



mincemeat is added, a little salt also ; then the com- 

 pound is laid in the skin, which is hollowed out, then 

 the thing is baked to a brown colour, a little lime 

 juice is added if necessary or according to taste and 

 served at table, and is eaten with potatoes or bread. 

 Vinegar curry is made by slitting the brinjal into 

 four, which is boiled in wattry coconut milk, to 

 which the usual condiments aie a little saffron, a 

 few green chilli s slit lengthways, some salt, and 

 over the whole is poured a little vinegar ; then boiled 

 and before taking it down a little thick milk is 

 added ; this is generally used with rice. 



Fried and Curried. — This is by far the nicest of 

 the dishes : the brinjal is slit into four or eight and 

 fried iu ghee or good expressed coconut oil ; then 

 the curry is made as above but without vinegar, 

 the fried brinjals are put in and boiled iu the curry 

 to some dryness ; this is also always eaten with rice. 



Curry-stuff curry is made by cutting the brinjal 

 into small bits and boiled with a little ground cori- 

 ander, dry chillies and saffron, a few prawns or a 

 bit of dry fish or Maldive fish must be a Ided ; then 

 boiled iu watery coconut milk to evaporation, and before 

 tile curry is wholly done a little thick coconut milk 

 is added and allowed to evaporate ; then taken down ; 

 tins with the addition of a little olive nil with rice 

 makes a strengthening and substantial meil. 



Sim.j}'e cuii-!/ is made by slilt ng the brinjal and 

 boil ng in coconut milk, to which are added the usual 

 condiments mentioned above. When made watery 

 and a little more chilly and some vinegar are added, 

 the curry is called pullecyanam, a great favorite with 

 the poor natives as it combines strength with taste 

 to the food and is economical in its preparation. 



Brinjal chutney or pacliea is an excellent appetizer, 

 and is made by roasting brinjal, the fleshy part taken 

 out and squeezed, then some vinegar, mustard, a little 

 ground chillies arc added and served: this is a nice con- 

 comitant to the ordinary dishes of rice and curry. 



Minced Qurry or Melloon (Sinhalese), Chundal ( i'amil). 

 — This is made by cutting the brinjal into very small 

 pieces and boiled to evaporation ; then a little salt 

 a few bits of green chillies and some quantit} of 

 scraped coconut are added and boiled again, when the 

 remaining water becomes dried leaving a dry com- 

 position, which is eaten with rice. 



There is a species of brinjal which grows wild : they 

 are almost shrubs ; the fruits are very small and round 

 but bitter and full of seed ; the poorer people collect 

 them for curries. One variety of the brinjal grows to 

 large trees with thick spreading branches ; the fruits 

 are globular but larger tlian the above, are full 

 of seed and are greedily eaten by cattle. — Yours truly, 



SILKX. 



TEA AND JAT. 



Dkak Sift, — I have to thank you fnr publishing 

 my two letters on this subject, written solely with 

 the object of eliciting information. The parsing 

 allusi< n in the first letter to the unfortunate spec 

 I made in plants last year was wholly unpremedit- 

 ated; and these form so snnll a fraction of my planted 

 area, that, beyond being a " caution " t> myself and 

 others, the point is of the smallest importance. I 

 have, however, git some other stult iu, here and there, 

 for which I am solely to blame ; and, as — to judge from 

 all lam toll — many others arc committing the same 

 mistake, I deem the subject worth ventilating. Your 

 readers have benefited by the two editorials, both 

 interesting, aud the last or.e containing all that can 

 bs desired on the subject of the three leading jats, 

 though I must I e excused for chronic blindness to 

 any allusions to " jat " in the former, 



I had no idea who ' ' Cranston " was ; and I now 



learn, for the first time, that " an article " must 

 necessarily be "editorial." 



I am prone to linguistic and clerical laziness, and 

 often omit words I thiiik redundant at the moment, 

 but yon, sir, at all events, have not mistaken my 

 meaning viz. : " Which statement is true ?" On looking 

 again, I find I had omitted " the little crooked thing 

 that asks questions." The answer you have given to 

 this question is that the statement that China lea 

 is best is the prejudiced vapour of a retail vendor of 

 the celestial kind, by the sale of which he had prob- 

 ably shrewdly calculated ho could make most profit, 

 that Colonel Mon>y is too enamoured of the pure 

 indigenous Indian plant and that Baildon is the true 

 oracle for Ceylon planters. 



But what I want more light thrown upon is the 

 "hybrid." Here is one word applied to "a hundred 

 varieties," and I submit that, so far as 1 can barn, no 

 sufficiently authoritative article, letter, essay or dis- 

 sertation or guide, has been published in any avail- 

 able form. I want to know what is practised in 

 Ceylon. Not long ago I passed through a well- 

 known es'ate and counted (or could see) thousands 

 of spikey-leaved Chinamen in full bearing. Again, 

 only the other day I was iu a neighbour's nursery 

 in which were several beds filled with well-grown 

 plants from the seed from a crack Ceylon estate 

 which seed it i3 even now difficult to obtain. There 

 was no mistaking the excellent quality of the larger 

 pnrtion of the plants, but neither was it possible for 

 even a half-trained eye to overlook the (to me) sur- 

 prisingly large percentage of inferior things, proving 

 a certain admixture of Chinese with the Indians 

 which must be growing on the said crack e*-tate. 

 Now, whence had these poor plants come? Unques- 

 tionably from the imported Indian seed, and, when 

 that estate was planted, the very caution which I am 

 now endeavouring to inculcate had not been praclised. 

 All the plants which grew up iu the nursery from 

 the imported seed were put out, and I suspect that, 

 with certain exceptions, the same thing is being done 

 this year by Ceylon planters inexperienced in tea, 

 many of whom, probably, my experience as here set 

 forth will serve to warn. V. S. 



TEA PREPARATION : HEATING AND DRYING 



MACHINERY. 



23rd Sept. 1SS-1. 

 Dear Sir, — The discussion on improved methods 

 of a drying-house, resulting from the appearance of 

 a paper on that subject by Mr. William Cameron, 

 which apparently terminated last March, was most 

 valuable a id interesting. I have been digesting what 

 1 then read, and I would like to state a difficulty 

 or two which troubles me somewhat. Clerihew's 

 system had a twofold object, viz., lirst, to draw down 

 a current of hoi air through heaped wet coffee, anil, 

 secondly, to dram down a current of cold air to keep 

 fresh and sweet coffee which was already dry but 

 which had a tendency towards deliquescence in wet 

 weather. For this purpose a two stoiied building was 

 required, each story performing its own function. 

 The tnp story was rendered air-tight aud a pa sage 

 was left below the reepered flooiing by nailing on 

 cloth r. ndered air-tight by starch and lime. Tlrs 

 was the cold air room, and the action of the fans 

 pulled the air through the heaped coffee, thus saving 

 the expensive aud troublesome necessity so well-known 

 to all coffee-planters ot turning the coffee with sbovi Is. 

 But in a wet climate and during a heavy crop there 

 was often a terrible time of auxiety to the planter 

 resulting from an accumulation of wet-washed cnil'ee 

 in the cisterns. In "bumper" days it was not 

 altogether an unknown thing to have the coffee 

 sprouting before it got a chance to dry. Now cumca 



