526 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[January i, 1885. 



PLANTING IN BRITISH GUIANA. 

 From Blr. Jenman's interesting Report as the Govern- 

 ment Botanist and Superintendent Botanic Gardens, we 

 quote as follows: — 



The annual rainfall of this country is comparatively 

 moderate for a region within the tropical belt, and it 

 shows considerable uniformity from year to year. The 

 mean for the three years that a record has been kept 

 at these gardens, is only S679 inches, and it is an un- 

 usual circumstance for a greater quantity to fall in a 

 month than fell last May (1S82). Indeed, about that 

 quantity occurs with a frequency approaching uniformity 

 as the heaviest monthly fall of the year. 



The heavy sugar crop of the colony last year, the largest 

 it has ever produced, was due to a combination of cir- 

 cumstances, the principal of which appears to have been 

 the making of dark sugar, and consequent reduced pro- 

 duction of rum. Other factors more potent than the 

 moderate character of the weather contributed to the re- 

 sult. How far it was due to favourable weather I have 

 not the information to discuss. It would be difficult, 

 however, to over-estimate the influence of seasonable 

 weather prevailing throughout the year on the staple 

 cultivation of this colony. The good or bad character of 

 the year's rainfall depends, within a certain mean limit, 

 not so much on its quantity as on the manner of its 

 distribution. The best seasons are those in which the rain- 

 fall is most uniformly distributed, presenting the least 

 contrast between the wet and dry seasons, and, in its 

 diffusion, modifying both. Crops suffer from protracted 

 drought while it lasts, but both ground and crops suffer 

 from excessive rain, the influence of which upon the for- 

 mer can be but slowly corrected by labour and time. 



Taking the last three years, and beginning with Feb- 

 ruary, as January belongs to the winter wet season, the 

 following table shows the rainfall for the successive seasons, 

 the dry and the wet following each other alternately:— 

 1880-1. 1881-2. 1882-3. 



Spring ... 24-00 in. 10-58 in. 1771 in. 



Summer ... 25-24 „ 29-95 „ , 36-"3 „ 



Autumn ... 7'66 „ 12'54 „ ' 1368 „ 



Winter ... 17-32 „ 34'53 „ 22-76 „ 



74-22 in. 87'60in. 90'SSin. 

 By thus following the seasons instead of the artificial 

 arrangement which dates from the first of the year, a 

 more just idea is obtained of the distribution anil quantity 

 of the years' rainfall. 



A plant of the beautiful Parkin pendula of Guiana and 

 Brazil, the Hippanai of the- Indians of this Colony, which 

 resembles so much in habit and size a Cedar of Lebanon 

 or of the Himalayas, though it differs essentially and 

 widely in its botanical characters, belonging in fact to the 

 distant order Leguminosas, was contributed by Mr. Alex- 

 ander Winter of Berbice, who has since been good enough 

 to procure a quantity of the seed for me. The Hippanai 

 is one of the largest trees of the forests of tropical 

 America, with a trunk four or five feet in diameter, and 

 sixty or seventy feet high, above which spreads the dome- 

 like, wide-reaching, head. I gathered last spring on the 

 Berbice River a few seeds of what appears, though the 

 tree was uot in flower at the time, to be a second species 

 of Parkin from its resemblance in growth and character, 

 which have produced three or four plants. 



Coffee. — The large Liberiau cotfec plants in the nurs- 

 ery, at three years and a half old, have produced their 

 first heavy crop of fruit, this being the second season 

 they have fruited. The best bush yielded twelve hundred 

 berries, but it is still thickly set with younger fruit in 

 different stages of growth, as in fact, they all are. Some 

 of the more heavily bearing bushes have not maintained 

 their former healthy appearance under the tax on their 

 energies imposed by production. Much, or nearly all, the 

 foliage on the bearing branches has dropped away, while 

 those bushes which are not in fruit, and those fruiting 

 for the first time, when they bear only a few berries, are 

 thickly clothed with healthy deep-green leaves. The branches 

 I allude to are fruiting almost to their tips, and 

 it must be remembered that it is characteristic of the 

 common Arabian Coffee, too, to drop most of the. foliage 

 from fruiting branches. All the berries produced are being 

 used for propagation. I mentioned last year having utilised 



the watery erect shoots which spring from the stem, and 

 which it left alone absorb much of the vital force of the 

 plant, by tying them out more or less horizontally on 

 bushes which, from any cause, had grown up with naked 

 or ill-turnisbed stems. The system has succeeded admir- 

 ably, and the wood of these shoots, produced since they 

 were cut back, conforms essentially in character to the 

 wood of the lateral shoots, which is the normal fruiting 

 wood of coffee. To carry it out, it is simply necessary 

 for the pruner as he goes through the bushes dis-buddiug 

 ami removing these shoots, to take in his hand a bundle 

 ot pomtsd sticks about two feet long, with a hook formed 

 by a spur of a branch at the upper end of each, and 

 with these pin out, one by one, by inserting the sticks in 

 the ground at a wide angle with the stem, the shoots 

 required for the purpose. The bloom of the Liberian 

 coffee opens during the night and dies away the next and 

 following days. All the bushes in bud at the time burst 

 into flower together, regardless of difference of age, the 

 source from whence they came, or any other circum- 

 stance ; so that, however widely separated bushes may be 

 they bloom simultaneously. The whole of a season's bloom 

 of a bush is not, however, produced at once, but at short 

 intervals of varying length between. This successional 

 character must cause the plants to be in fruit all the 

 year round. Some of the plants in the gardens exhibit a 

 tendency to over-production, and consequent inability 

 observable in dry weather, to mature the whole crop under 

 this periodical accumulation of fruit. 



Sug aii Canes. — The different sugar canes procured last 

 year, which had just begun to sprout when my Report 

 was written, matured during the past autumn, and thus 

 afforded an opportunity for their relative merits to be 

 judged on the limited scale the small quantity of each 

 kind allowed, which, however, to this extent, was fair, as 

 it affected all alike. Six kinds were grown, but I have 

 eliminated two — one, a white cane, on account of its 

 short woody joints; and the other, a black one, for its 

 slender habit, both in the size and quantity of the canes 

 to a stool. The following are provisional names I have 

 given them, chiefly after the countries from whence they 

 were derived : — Hawaiian, Mauritian, Elephant, and Singa- 

 pore Elephant. 



The Hawaiian, which Mr. McCalman imported from the 

 Sandwich Islands, where on the irrigated lava plains and 

 valleys it is said to yield five tons of sugar to an acre, 

 is characterised by its stiff, straight, erect habit, which 

 marks the foliage as well as the canes. The plants were 

 raised from single eyes, but averaged twenty ripe canes 

 to the stool when cut, which shows that it is a good 

 kind for, what sugar planters call, stooliug, i.e., producing 

 many shoots from a root. This cane is of a dull straw 

 colour, of the size aud length of joint of the Bourbon, 

 the form a root. This cane is of a dull straw colour, of 

 the size and length of joint of the Bourbon, the form 

 commonly cultivated here. One of its advantages is that 

 up to the time it is cut it remains perfectly erect. This 

 character should recommend it for cultivation on the West 

 India islands, where, by the frequently experienced gales, 

 fields of Bourbon cane are often laid prostrate. It ap- 

 pears to ratoon freely (i.e., shoot well from the root the 

 second year), which is an indispensable character in a cane 

 for cultivation. When ripe, twenty-one canes, all of an 

 average stool, weighed 68 lb., and the foliage of the tops 

 13 lb. The latter is of a strikingly dark-green colour. 



The Mauritian is a cane that has survived of a wardiau 

 case of different forms which I sent here some years ago 

 from Jamaica, which were there derived, with many others, 

 from Mauritius. It is a very productive kind, averaging 

 twenty-five canes to a stool. It is fairly erect, but not 

 stiff aud straight like the preceding, and hardly up to the 

 average of good varieties in height, thickness and length 

 of joint. The latter defect is a disqualifying character 

 from the manufacturer's point of view. Otherwise, on 

 good land, it would prove a very productive form. It is 

 a white, clear-skinned, cane. One stool, cut at the ground, 

 of twenty-four canes, weighed 67 lb. and the leaves 11 lb. 

 The Elephant cane, procured from Barbados, is prob- 

 ably the true Elephant cane, which is said to resemble 

 a Bamboo in habit and growth, aud contains a moderate 

 percentage of sugar. It is a large soft-fibred form, pro- 

 ducing few shoots to a stool (only about a dozen), sub. 



