8o6 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[May i, 1885. 



agent employed is electricity. The cost is said to be not 

 more than " 3s 4d per ton, and the result a hard sugar of 

 almost absolute purity without any syrup, whatever." As 

 the cost of refining, under the present re-rneltmg processes, 

 varies from £3 to £5 per ton, the above alleged discovery 

 would be a startling one if it were true. 



COFFEE PLANTING AND SCOTCH FARMING. 

 (By an ex-Ceylon Coffee Planter.) 



WHY OLD COLONISTS ON RETURNING TO THEIR NATIVE LAND 

 TAKE TO FARMING— GOOD TENANTS — MANURING— LEAF-DIS- 

 EASE NOT TO BLAME FOR ALL THE MISCHIEF TO COFFEE — 

 ARTIFICIAL MANURES— BAD PLANTING — WEEDS— DEPRESSION 

 IN COFFEE PLANTING AND FARMING — TEN YEARS AGO 

 AND NOW. 



The question has often been asked, why is it that 

 so many men who have lived in the East, on return- 

 ing to their native land, adopt faiming as a pro- 

 fession. This question has never been answered to 

 my knowledge, but the following are the reasons, as 

 far as I have been able to gather them from others, 

 aa well as from my own experience. That merchants 

 in the East work far harder than men of the same 

 profession do in England, and planters work harder 

 than farmers do in Britain, I think there can be no 

 doubt ; and yet one never hears of them cryiDg out 

 for an eight hours movement : so far from their doing 

 so, work becomes such a part of their existence, that 

 idleness is to them the hardest work of all. So it 

 come3 about, that, when a tea-merchant from China, 

 a broker from India, or a planter from Ceylon, gives 

 up his work abroad, to settle at home, idleness be- 

 comes so irksome to him, that he looks around for 

 something to do, and invariably his choice falls on 

 farming, it may be as the proprietor of an estate, 

 or it may be as a tenant : this of course depends on the 

 means at his disposal. 



A farmer is virtually his own master, and can 

 do anything that he may wish, subject to a few 

 restrictions mentioned in his lease, as to the course 

 of cropping he is to adopt, and the quantity of 

 manure he has to apply. This is the great charm of a 

 farmer's life to men from the East, who have been ac- 

 customed to have themselves obeyed in every respect, 

 and this is the chief reason why they adopt farming 

 as a profession. Whether it is a profitable business 

 for them or not is a different thing, but, judging by 

 the many cases I have known, I consider it a very 

 profitable thing for a proprietor to secure some of 

 these returned self-exiles as tenants, for they are 

 always ready to spend money in doing good to their 

 farms, aud are generous to the soil, knowing that 

 only by kindness can they expect good returns from 

 the earth. 



It may seem anomalous to compare planting 

 in Ceylon with farming in Scotland, but yet 

 I find old planters, now farmer. , applying the know- 

 ledge they gained, on the coffee estates of Ceylon 

 and India, to the work of their farms here, 

 and in nothing more than in the vexed question of 

 manuring. In the palmy days of thecoffi-e enterprise 

 in Ceylon, manuring became a mania, planters were 

 reckless of prices, aud apparently only strove to dis- 

 cover a manure that would put more crop on their 

 trees, regardless whether it injured the trees or not. 

 Castor cake, coconut poonac, rape cake, &c, were 

 all tried, and in many cases the result was good for the 

 one year, but then something happened and Hcmileia 

 vastatrix had to bear all the blame. Truly, leaf- 

 disease was a virulent foe, but it was not to blame for 

 all that it got credit for, and I am more confident 

 now than I was ten years ago, that the artificial ; 

 manures which were applied to the coffee bushes did 

 more harm than good by forcing the trees to undue 1 



bearing only to make them collapse afterwards and 

 made them less able to withstand any disease. It 

 is well-known that liquid manure is conducive to 

 finger-and-toe disease in turnips, and yet liquid 

 manure is the finest that can be applied so long as 

 it is accompanied by plenty of bulk. It may bo 

 remembered that those portious of coffee estates which 

 lay handy to cattle sheds and cooly lines were the 

 last to succumb to leaf-disease, and I think no orje 

 will deny that this was all owing to the bulky manure 

 which was put round the coffee there. In like manner, 

 \ know land in Scotland which gets year after year 

 large quantities of artificial manures either ploughed 

 in or used as top dressing,' but the result is most 

 unsatisfactory, whilst other ground, poor sandy soil 

 or reclaimed peat moss, which gets its regular quantum 

 of cattle manure and bones, gives crops good enough 

 to encourage farmers even in these depressing times. 

 The usual quantities of manures that one is bound 

 to apply, according to one's lease, are 14 yards of 

 farmyard dung aud 500 cwt. of bone meal per acre 

 during a five years' course. This is apparently a large 

 quantity, but there are many farmers who are not 

 satisfied with this, but apply considerably more, and 

 I have not yet heard of a single instance in which 

 the farmer who did so, regretted his kindness to the 

 land. This has been my own rule, and during the 

 last three years in which I have been engaged farm- 

 ing my average crop of oats has been 40 bushels per 

 acre, which is remarkably good if one is to believe 

 what has been the farmer's outcry for the past three 

 years, "the land is worked out," the more so when 

 I find by reference to colonial statistics that oats in 

 Victoria only averaged 22 bushels, in New Zealand 

 27 bushels, and in Tasmania 25 bushels, three countries 

 blessed with an unlimited amount of virgin soil. 



I do not for a moment mean to say that the experience 

 which I gained of the effect of artificial manures on 

 coffee had proved them to be not only useless but 

 damaging but what I did learn was that artificial 

 manure applied by itself was most injurious by causing 

 any plant to over-exert itself aud then to collapse ; 

 but when the same is applied along with bulky 

 manure it is most beneficial. If one is unable to 

 apply bulky manure, then it is far better to le:ive the 

 artificial unapplied also. Having formed this opinion, 

 I am in the habit of applying bones along with the 

 oattle manure to my arable land, for no artificial 

 manure ever tells better than bones. Naturally, the 

 cattle manure on a farm iu Scotland is richer thau 

 that on a coffee estate, for here the cattle consume 

 large quantities of linseed aud cotton cakes, besides 

 oats, bran and salt ; and manure from cattle fed on 

 one tou of linseed cake is said by Sir J. B. Lawes, 

 an eminent authority to be worth £6 10s, as compared 

 with that where the cattle have only grass, and which 

 is valued at 15s only. 



Besides there being a similarity in the work of 

 manuring a coffee estate aud doing the same to 

 an arable farm, there is also an opportunity of 

 utilizing the knowledge gained abroad in the 

 pruning and planting of trees, and here 1 may 

 remark that I have never yet seen a properly pruned 

 gooseberry bush, tho British gardener having a pre- 

 judice in favour of "crows' nests" as we used 

 to call them in the case of coffee bushes that 

 had been badly cleaned out in the centres, 

 Foresters also have a careless way of putting 

 in young trees, and no wonder that the death-roll 

 is so great, when every second tree has its root 

 twisted upwards in the ground. An old planter can 

 easily tellj by its sickly, pining look, a tree that 

 has been treated in this way, but I have astonished 

 mauy here by pulling up young trees, one after the 

 other, aud showing the roots twisted in a manner 

 that prevented their growing. 



