7oo 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 



[March 2, 1885. 



dollars, say £7 10s, as her marriage portion was held 

 to l>e in prosperous circumstances, and he who gave 

 two hundred was called rich. 



The public revenue in such a country was of ne- 

 cessity ratlier limited and consisted of a monopoly 

 of the production of cinnamon, a salt monopoly, a 

 tithe on the grain grown, a customs duty on the 

 small import trade, and a few other small imposts, 

 which with a pearl fishery at long intervals made up 

 an average of something over P3, 000, 000. 



It was into this state of affairs that the existence 

 of a road into the central districts brought Europeans 

 with money in their pockets, and in native opinion 

 a mad desire to get rid of it. I do not propose to 

 go into the history of coffee planting in the island, 

 the capital and the lives it wasted, its see-saws of 

 d pie-sion and prosperity till the great disaster that 

 in ten years has reduced the production to one-fourth 

 of the amount it once reached and in its fall has 

 carried ruin into industrial pursuits that it created 

 and supported. Hcmileia vaxtntnx lias not only ruined 

 coffee plauting but everything that even remotely 

 deponde 1 on it. Except the purely native element 

 that has lived its own life apart in the obscure vill- 

 nges unaffected by the changes that went on outside 

 its economy as inherited through fifty generations of 

 uneuterprizing ancestors, and a less numerous but 

 more important ection of natives who made money 

 when they had the chance and invested it in coco- 

 i.uts, cinnamon and other enterprises that can now 

 taud alone and save the country from ever falling 

 back n> o the p >verty-stricken, dead-alive state of 

 ha fa century ago, tven had European planting be- 

 come a thing oi the past, which was greatly desider- 

 ated ny some members of the public service, but is 

 unt likely to come to pass yet awhile. The planters 

 have (ought their battle like a band of heroes. No 

 sooner had the serious nature of the fungus become 

 suspected than they began to plant all kinds of new 

 products suitable to their respective climttes, and 

 that promised to pay for the cultivation, cinchona, 

 Liberian coffee, cacao, cardamoms, rubber and tea. 



O.i thi- last planters have takeu their stand, and 

 have • lected ii king instead of the moribund coffee 

 tree, it is asserted that this plant grows luxuriantly 

 over more than one third of the surface of the island 

 and from the sea-shore up to 7,000 feet, that it will 

 pay to grow it on indifferent soil, but that in 

 the most favoured spots unprecedented crops have 

 been produced already, 900 lb. per acre and more ex- 

 pected wh n the bushes are more mature, but 

 no oae seems to doubt that 400 lb. is to 

 be got got off almost any land, and that with 

 proper machinery it can be put into the London 

 market for 6d per pound, where it has already made 

 a place for itself, inferior to none. While such are 

 the opinions generally held by Ceylon planters, you 

 may be sure they arc not idly contemplating poss- 

 ibilities but rapidly carrying their theories into 

 practice, and tea plants are bein • put down by tens 

 of millions For good or for evil, Ceylon has com- 

 mitted itseli to tea, and a great tea country it will 

 become ; nothing will hold them back now, though I 

 and others may howl om selves hoarse, shouting 

 festina Unite. There would not be much to regret in 

 this movement were it not that bad jat may result 

 from the hurry, and the vast demand for labour 

 may soon outrun the supply, and permanently in- 

 crease wages without estates beiug thereby fully manned. 

 The present advantages of the Ceylon tea producers 

 are a forcing climate, a railway that penetrates 

 to the heart of the mountain zone, good cart roads into 

 nearly every important district, a tolerably abundant 

 and not prohibitively costly supply of labour— but it 

 is said t.iat competition is beginning to tell in what 

 has hitherto been Ceylon's preserve ; and we are 



quite willing to believe that our average per acre 

 will exceed that of our Indian brethren by twenty- 

 five per cent. The only one of those advantages that 

 has the elements of permanency about it is the 

 climate that gives a tea harvest all the year round. 

 In a few years India will match us in means of 

 communication, while increased competition and cheap 

 and rapid means of travel will tend to equalize 

 wages all over India and Ceylon. By the time Ceylon 

 sends her fifty or sixty millions of pounds of tea 

 annually into the markets of the world consumption 

 will not be able to overtake supply and a time of low 

 prices will ensue, through which only the fittest will 

 survive, namely, those who can give the finest qualities 

 at the lowest cost of production. 



It is most probable that here in Ceylon, where the 

 most perfect machinery yet invented is in use, the 

 lowest cost of production has been reached and we 

 may take it as an established fact that it can never 

 be produced at a lower rate in future, as the undoubted 

 tendency of the age in this part of the world is towards 

 a rise in the wages of labour as new industries open up 

 new fields of employment and the condition of the 

 labouring population improves with larger means. 

 The best tea soil is a deep permeable loam, the richer 

 in the common elements of fertility the better. As 

 the soil falls off, either towards stiff clay or hungry 

 gravel, the growth becomes less and less rapid and 

 vigorous, yet tea will grow tolerably on soils that few 

 other useful plants would relish. The most important 

 point in the establishment of a tea field is the choice 

 of plants. We have borrowed the word jilt from 

 India and speak of a good or bad jat according as it 

 approaches to our ideal of what a tea bush ought to 

 be. I he tea plant is indigenous in the forests of 

 Assam, and though it has been cultivated in China 

 from time immemorial it is probably not indigenous 

 in that country, and the forest tree of Assam and the 

 cultivated shrub of China are specifically the same. 

 When the two varieties were planted together the 

 seed of either produced varieties without end. There 

 is no hybridizing in the process but only what takes 

 place in the case of all other plants that run to 

 varieties. We have learned to call the plants we 

 want to cultivate Assam hybrid, but instead of one 

 hybrid we have a score of typ>s and even within 

 these no two plants are exactly alike in the size, form, 

 colour and serrate of the leaf or in the habit of 

 growth Many of the inferior sorts are unfit for 

 cultivation and should be treated as weeds as soon as 

 they declare themselves and their place supplied with 

 better jat. The seed should be takeu from the very 

 best jar,, but this even will not be safe if an inferior 

 jat be a'lowed to flower at the same time within a 

 bee flight 



I do not know what set me on about jat, which can 

 b- of er little interest to you. but as it is written 

 I let v stand If your grandson should finally decide 

 ou tea planting he will learn tha* and other things 

 co nected Hi the business best on the spot. 



A large ropoition f I e tea already planted is on 

 old coffee land, and there are plenty of old estates in 

 the market, but for a young man proposing to settle 

 new land is what, I would recommend. The Govern- 

 ment upset price is R10 per acre, but all choice lots 

 are iu future likely to be competed for, and it is hard 

 to fix a probable price, but lower qualities outside 

 the coconut region may generally be had for the 

 upset price. f I were going in for tea on my 

 own account I would prefer lots over 1,500 feet 

 above sea 1< vel, as you are more likely to get 

 regular rain than at a lower elevation, and frequent 

 rain i9 a necessary element in successful tea-growing. 



In the part of the country I reside in there re- 

 mains no Government land but at the current rate 

 of labour a tea estate of 100 acres could be estab- 



