402 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST 



[November i, 1884. 



that there is a chance here for the Government, by a 

 free distribution of seed and plants, to assist them to 

 assist themselves. Factories can't be expected to spring 

 up before the plant, but let the want be once felt, and 

 there will always be enterprize and capital to meet it. 

 Of course many estates are prepared to buy green leaf 

 now, but there are districts where such facilities do 

 not exist, and it is more in reference to those dis- 

 tricts I am writing. 



Is there truth in the constant croak of our In- 

 dian rivals that the large outturn of tea per acre 

 here is not likely to he maintained? I have heard it 

 said that some of the old places are not doing well this 

 year, nor looking so either, and that the falling-off in 

 profits is veryserious. Yetthis muchmust be added, that, 

 even at the reduced figures given, the thing was hand- 

 some enough. It would be difficult, I fear, to get any- 

 thing like reliable statistics of a retrograde character : 

 no man wants to depreciate his own property, and an 

 exceptional year such as this has been is not after all 

 a just test as to what old tea may do again in a normal 

 season. 



Did you ever hear of a movable live fence? I was 

 hearing of a native dodge with this as its aim and 

 whereby a covetous neighbour may encroach little by 

 little keeping a live fence growing all the time. The 

 plant is the common trumpet .flower, or datura, freely 

 used to mark boundaries, and the system carried out is 

 to give one of the stems a cut, let it fall over into your 

 neighbour's ground, put a stone on the top of it, a foot or 

 two in from the boundary, and by and bye it will take 

 root there. When it has begun to grow, come along 

 quietly with a mamotie, uproot the parent plant, leave 

 the new one growing, and the grouud is gained. 

 What a wealth of device there is in the native mind ! 

 and how desirable it is that less gifted people should 

 bo in a state of preparedness to meet it ! 



Pepper Corn. 



PLANTING EXPERIMENTS ON A "LOW- 

 COUNTRY " ESTATE IN CEYLON. 



COMPARATIVE FAILURE OF LIBERIAN COFFEE — APPARENT TOTAL 

 FAILURE OF CACAO — VARIOUS ENEMIES OF THE CACAO 

 PLANT — WIND, DROUGHT, WEEDS AND WASH — GROWTH OF 

 .IAK, KAPOK, AND PEPPER — CURIOUS ROCKS — GEOLOGICAL 

 FORMATION — PROBABLE SUCCESS OF TEA — GOOD GROWTH — 

 DANGER OF TEA BEING OVERDONE — WANT OF WATER- 

 POWER — INDIARUBBER — BAMBOO — PINEAPPLES — LAB O R — 

 NATIVE BULLOCKS — KEPPETIYA — A EOCK FOR A FINE VIEW 

 — RATAN PALMS. 



I secured 124 acres of land in Siyane (formerly 

 Cilia !) Korale West, at the period when all believed 

 in the gigantic coffee of Liberia, feeling confident, 

 naturally enough, that its gi'eat leathery leaves would 

 resist the fungus which had proved so fatal to the 

 Arabian or rather Abyssinian species. I also con- 

 templated experiments with cacao, cardamoms and 

 tropical products generally, with the resolution, which 

 has been most amply fulfilled, of letting the public 

 have the benefit of my experience whether successful 

 or otherwise. It has been largely " otherwise" until 

 now that tea has been tried. That truly cosmo- 

 politan plant promises, in the low-country as in 

 the high, to compensate for losses by coffee' and 

 other products. Not that Liberian coffee on Dumbar- 

 ton has been an entire failure. There are considerable 

 expanses of the younger trees, than which nothing could 

 look more fresh and flourishing, while some of the older 

 trees, after having been repeatedly denuded by heavy 

 crop- bearing and attacks of Hemileia vastatrix, are 

 clothed in pristine magnificence of foliage. Allowing 

 for the ravages of crickets in the early stage of the 

 existence of Liberian coffee, insects generally do not 



seem much to affect this plant, and, given the right 

 form of trees with plenty of primaries and the absence 

 of the insidious "leaf-disease," Liberian coffee would 

 certainly have been a fair success. It does not seem, 

 however, as if cacao ever could be a success for the 

 special locality. The soil over considerable portions of 

 the estate seems suitable enough, and in sheltered 

 nooks, amidst the rocks and boulders, there are still 

 some fine trees. A good many of the fruits even on 

 these, however, are black, and, on being broken open, 

 reveal colonies of larva?. The majority in the open 

 had their foliage periodically torn to pieces by the 

 monsoon winds, and, when, in calm weather, a fresh 

 crop of succulent leaves appeared, they were devoured 

 by a variety of biting and sucking bugs. Helopeltis 

 Antonii has never, as yet, been identified in any stage, 

 but it is impossible to conceive that he could 

 exceed in destructiveness a maggot which works 

 under a conical cover, for all the world like a 

 limpet, only that the leaf-limpet moves readily 

 about on the surface of the leaf, out of which 

 he sucks the life blood. This destructive insect is 

 I believe, the grub of Aprata Thwaitesii, Moore 

 What with this and other insects preying on the 

 leaves, when the wind was not tearing the foliage 

 into shreds, it was no wonder that many of the 

 cacao plants succumbed to the drought of 1S84, quite un- 

 exampled in severity as it was since 1879. Young 

 coconut palms all around the region looked always 

 so fresh and green, that the violence of the wind 

 was as much a surprise as the amount of wash. For 

 multitudinous weeds difficult of eradication we were 

 somewhat prepared. They require attention in pro- 

 portion to the forcing nature of the lowcountry climate. 

 Until the jungle was cleared away no one could have 

 supposed that the rock features in the centre of the 

 land were so high and steep : — the highest point 300 

 feet above the lowest on the estate ana 400 feet above 

 sea level. Monsoon rainstorms striking on the Bummit 

 rocks rush down with violence which could not have 

 been anticipated. The nature of some portions of the 

 surface soil is such, — almost pure humus, — that drains 

 are not so successful here as upcountry in preventing 

 denudation. The climate, too, is far less favourable 

 for planting operations than that of the higher regions 

 in which I am interested, so that the "failures" 

 we have had to deplore on Dumbarton of African 

 palms, nutmegs, cloves, and cardamoms are comparable 

 to those of Beau Brummell with his neckerchiefs. 

 Jak trees grow splendidly (one tree has borne fruit in 

 its fourth year!) and kapok (tree-cotton) promises 

 well. So does pepper, for which the trees named form 

 good supports, as do the perfectly perpendicular faces 

 of rocks. Curiously enough, the pepper vines refuse 

 to grow not only on flat rock surfaces but also on 

 those which incline from the perpendicular. We 

 have plenty of perpendicular masses and columns for 

 this useful plant to cover, so many monument-like 

 columns standing up on one portion of the estate 

 as to justify the term " Necropolis" being applied 

 to it. The shapes of the rocks are most fautastic, 

 boulder being occasionally seen piled above boulder. 

 There is also quite a series of caves, and not only are 

 the rocks weathered, but their perpendicular faces are 

 striated from the effects of temporary water-coarses. 

 The stratification is in some cases inverted, and the 

 result of this and of the weathering away of the softer 

 veins is occasionally very curious : a great sheet 

 stands separated some inches from the perpendicular 

 pareut rock, and this sheet, on being struck, gives 

 forth a sound as if it were a giant granite gong. 

 I have seldom seen gneiss in Ceylon so granitic in 

 composition as many masses here are, and certainly never 

 saw such a preponderance of red colour over the 

 usual grey of our gneiss. The colour is, I feel 

 pretty confident, due to the large proportion of felspar 



