December i, 1884.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



1 i<i 



inches of grass under the boards was rotten; all the rest 

 in good order, but not so moist as I expected. It weighed 

 30 lb. to the cubic foot. I had then three tons of fold, -r, 

 costing KG per ton. Cattle took to it at once. It would not 

 have cost me more than K3'8 to R4 per ton had I repeated 

 the experiment this Mason. The following particulars, will, 

 perhaps, be found useful : — 



Kind of Grass.— About J'l per ceut of Huryali ; the rest 

 tussock, and other coarse grasses. The land on which the grass 

 was grown is quite bare iu the hot weather. I believe anything 

 green will make ensilage. 



How put in'.' and how much at once ?— Bundles untied thrown 

 in and well trodden down. As much as you can. 



Covering boards.— 2 inches thick; length equals the breadth 

 of the pit. 



Weight.— Put on some weight whenever you stop work. 



Kind of weights.— Concrete blocks 9" « 9>i 18" are used in 

 England. 



Iu a recent number of the Field notice is taken of a patent 

 in which a simple mechanical principle is made use of. The 

 machine is called the Eusilager. Price £'25 for a silo 50 feet 

 long ; stones areas good as anyting. 



Mats.— General Wilkinson's suggestion to use date mats he- 

 ween the grass and boards is agood one. 



How long between each filling? Immaterial, if weights 

 are on. 



Foreign substances mixed in.— Nothing necessary; salt 

 might be used to insure the cattle getting it. 



Chopping of material.— A freer use use of the chaff engine 

 than is considered necessary in England may be advisable. 

 Maize, Guinea grass. Sorghum aud Ileana, &c. especially. 



Color— Pale yellow green, turning brown after exposure. 



Is the pit air tight '.'—There is nothing to make the pit air 

 tight except compression by the weights. 



How much removed at once ? — Enough for the day, a slice 

 one foot wide or so, should be cut right down at the iower end. 

 It can then be sliced oil like cutting a hay-rick ; weights should 

 be kept on the remainder till wanted. The Field says no change 

 takes place under a week. 



How drained?— I sloped the floor four inches to one corner 

 and made a small well. This should have been stopped up 

 till the cutting began, then opened to allow the ooze to run 

 off. Monsieur Gaffart, in his " Manuel de V Ensilage," says 

 " If water gets into the silo, whether from without, or as the 

 result of pressure put on maize, that is very full of moisture 

 at the time of ensilage, take care not to let it be wasted. The 

 beasts drink this kind of vegetable soup with great avidity, 

 and thus all loss may be avoided on this head." 



Cost and Construction. — This of course depends on the local 

 cost of labour, the nature of the soil, roof, &c. A lining of 

 brick work, run over with cement, would be an improvement. 

 In my opinion the sides should be perpendicular, otherwise 

 the covering boards would be disarranged during tho sinking. 

 It would be as well to cousider, when making a silo, what the 

 daily requirements of the herd are, so that one or more com- 

 plete slices would suffice for the day 



Rations. — Fifty pounds a day is set down, and this appears 

 to be ample. In feeding cattle I have noticed that they eat 

 every bit of it. There is absolutely no wastage; the coarse or 

 rank grass seems to be rendered palatable by the process. 



While on the subject of cattle food may I draw the 

 attention of the Secretary of the Society for the Pre- 

 vention of Cruelty to Animals to the Government order 

 relating to feeding charges on impounded cattle. One anna 

 per day is all that is allowed for a horse, bullock or cow, 

 fee. ; it is pure starvation as things exist in these parts. 



PLANTING IN SOUTH WYNAAD. 



EXPERIMENTAL CULTIVATION OF THE NEW PRODUCTS— TEA 

 AND FIBRE — REVISION OF THE SETTLEMENT — JUSTICE TO THE 

 PLANTERS AND NAVARS. 



Vvtiiery, Oct. ISth— "Whenever the coffee and cinchona 

 markets are depressed one hears a good deal about the 

 capabilities of the AVynaad for growing other products — 

 tea, cardamoms, rhea, tobacco and the rest ; the fact being 

 that almost any of the industrial plants that require a 

 tropical climate will grow here luxuriantly. But a rise of 

 a shilling or two in the price of coffee sees us off on an- 

 other tack, and everybody talks of the difficulty of pro- 

 curing labour when it is most wanted for tea, aud of end- 

 less troubles the cardamom grower has with the jungle 

 tribes. The present depression has, however, been so long 

 continued that there are some signs of planters here be- 

 ing seriously on the look out for something new to open 

 land with, and your recent article on tobacco cultivation 

 has been read with a good deal of interest. The writer 

 does not state for how many years in succession the land 

 planted in the way he recommends can be cropped ; and 

 as tobacco is extremely exhausting to the soil under ordin- 

 57 



ary conditions, and land is becoming scarce in Wynaad 

 this point is of importance. As for tea, its success in Cey- 

 lon ought to stimulate us into planting it, espei i 

 Wynaad is said to be peculiarly lilt, -,1 to grow it ; indeed 

 it is already doing very well in. the few places v I 

 been tried ; and a planter from the Kangra Valley, who 

 visited us last year, was surprized at the growth of some 

 trees he saw. There appears, however, to bi 

 feeling of doubt as to whether the Oeylon plan 

 overdoing the thing, as they did with cinchoi 

 are waiting for further news as to the av 

 of tea planted on abandoned coffee land, as tl 

 ofJOOlb. per acre made by the " trver beats ah ,t any- 

 thing we have heard of, even on new soil, aud iu tl 

 ceptional case of the Mariawatte estate which you quo! 1 



lately, it appears that the land is at a low eleva , an I 



has great facilities for heavy manuring'. Messrs. Parry .<; 

 Oo. havo some land of this kind planted with te 

 Vythery, but though the tea is very good, aud is generally 

 drunk in the district, I believe the outturn is not sufficii nt 

 to show much profit. Moreover, while it is possible to make 

 a coffee estate, however small, pay for its working, it is of 

 no use to go in for tea, unless one is prepared to open largel v. 

 so as to keep the expensive machinery pretty constantly 

 at work ; and financial reasons keep Wynaad men from 

 "plunging" just at present. Some trial plantings of fibre 

 have been made this monsoon, principally of the wild rhea, 

 or kurrykuddy, as the natives call it. The file 

 from it has been valued at about £10 per ton. It grows 

 here naturally ; but planting it from roots has proved too 

 expensive, and cuttings do uot seem to do well, so it will 

 be necessary to collect the seed, and form nurseries of it 

 for next year if it is to be largely grown. I hear that 

 the " Gleurock " people are putting up machinery to treat 

 the bowstring fibre, which grows iu great quantities on 

 some land they have acquired. It is to be hoped that this, 

 the first attempt made in these parts to collect our natural 

 fibres on a large scale, will be a success. If, however, the 

 experience of some planters here is a criterion, the '• (ileu- 

 rock " people will find that the expense and trouble of col- 

 lecting the plants from a large area, and bringing them to 

 a central mill, are very great.— Madras Mail. 



THE TEA-MITE AND THE TEA-BUG OF ASSAM. 



A very opportune work has lately made its appearance, 

 in which the author, Mr. Wood-Mason, of the Italian Mu- 

 seum, tells us all that he has, after careful research, been 

 able to gather respecting the formidable pests mentioned 

 above. The work is rendered all the more valuable by several 

 admirably finished colored plates, showing the pests enorm- 

 ously enlarged, and giving, thus, a very tangible idea 

 of the destructive capabilities of these enemies of the tea 

 plant. It is difficult to say which of the two is the mcro 

 deadly. The tea-bug or mosquito blight attacks the young 

 shoots, which then curl and dry up, while the red spider 

 more particularly confines its ravages to the full-grown 

 succulent leaves. A curious circumstance in connection with 

 both these forms of blight is, that neither of the 

 two has yet been met with on any other plant, 

 — at least, so says Mr. Wood-Mason; but some 

 planters dispute this, and we should be inclined to think, 

 also, that the tea bush is not the only plant patron;,.! by 

 these gentry.* The difficult matter iu applying any remedy 

 for red spider is, that the eggs are laid iu holloa-.; close to 

 the ribs of the leaves, and are not scattered over the 

 surface, so as to be at once perceptible and gel at-able. 

 Although heavy rain is one of the best antidotes, still the 

 eggs are so firmly attached to the leaves, that it n 

 a good deal of continuous downpour to wash the eggs away, 

 aud even then the spider itself takes shelter a 

 the leaves, and is thus on the spot ready to com: 

 anew. Wheuat Darjeeling some years ago, visited a 



garden there heavily afflicted with red spider; and 

 out after a heavy downpour of rain, we picked several 



* It is only recently that helopeltis has bee* identified 

 on cacao plants in Ceylnn, but it seems very extraordin- 

 ary that Mr. Wood-Ma«>n should never have heard of 

 the long-continued and serious attacks by this inseel 

 the cinchonas in Java — Ed. 



