a 3, 1885] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



"^7 



TEA CULTIVATION AND YIELD AT HIGH 

 AND MEDIUM ELEVATIONS IN CEYLON . No. I. 



COFFEE WHICH ST ILL YIELDS PAVING CROPS— CINCHONA 

 BABK KERPING rr OLD COFFEE. 

 The annual and weekly reviews of a number of 

 Londou Tea broking houses are to hand by the mail, and 

 the series of sales reported, including the really 

 magnificent prices for Egokwood teas, are very satis- 

 factory. Several of the London Firms call attention 

 to our summing-up and review of 4th ultimo, in 

 which we deprecated too great haste on the 

 part of planters to transform all their coffee acre- 

 age into tea— and indeed too great haste on the 

 of any individual proprietor to plant more 

 than a reasonable extent with the now leading product. 

 We wrote in the interests of careful planting and care- 

 ful selection of seed, as much as of retaining intact 

 cotfee fields that still paid for expenditure if not 

 some interest on capital. To cover the country 

 again with the one plant will be too much like 

 repeating the mistake at first committed with coffee ; 

 so we shall trust to see tea, cinchona and even coffee 

 fairly distributed up-country, with in many cases, 

 cardamoms, and cacao and even coca with the half-a- 

 dozen minor similar products. 



Our friend and correspondent " Moderation " (see p. 009) 

 has done goad service to the cause of the tea enter- 

 prise in Ceylon by the suspicions he ventured to 

 express and the questions he asked of the planting 

 community. Mr. Drummond of Western Dolosbaga ) 

 without dealing with a thousand of pounds per 

 acre, or even half that maximum, gives good reason 

 we think in his statistics of the yield from very 

 young tea, for regarding his district favourably ; and 

 we have no doubt that a propnrtionably encour- 

 aging report can be given by planters in old 

 Dolosbagie. Travelling the other day in the company 

 of planters so experienced and shrewdly observant as 

 Messrs. Elphinstone, Talbot and Borron we had the op- 

 portunity of hearing a good deal on the pro's and con's 

 of new and old products and also of the advantages 

 and disadvantages of certain tea machinery. Mr. 

 Borron had doubts as to the advantages of " No. 3 

 sirocco " which Mr. E. M. Hay of Goorokoya was 

 certain would vanish no further acquaintance 

 with a machine which in his experience did 

 excellent work. The circumstance of Logie and 

 Belgravia estates this season giving 11,0U0 bushels 

 of coffee alieady gathered, with perhaps 1,500 to 

 2.000 more to come in, is encouraging to owners of 

 the old product. ; for we believe not much manure 

 was used to secure this result. The maximum crop 

 of these estates has however been so high as 23,000 

 bushels ; but the half of this with the present economy 

 in working, will pay. Another instance of a change 

 for the better is found in the case of an old Dolos- 

 bagie property which in 1882, after an apparently 

 goeeel blossom, yielded for its harveBt, but ninety bush- 

 els of cotfee ! Now the same place this season, gives 

 its 1,100 bushels of coffee, 20, 000 lb. cinchona bark, 

 and a good many thousands of lb. of tea. That 

 is the experience we should like to see realized 

 oa a great many of the old properties. In connec- 

 tion with Mariawatte a. el its fine tea returns, the 

 question was raised as to whether it (as Weyuug- 

 awattie) had ever done much in coffee although 

 freelv manured. Mr. Borron who, twenty years ago 

 83 



thought it amongst the finest-looking sheets of coffee he 

 had ever seen, never heard of good crops ; but Mr. 

 H. Blacklaw tells us that in 1860 it yielded some 

 13 cwt. an acre and, perhaps as a consequence, 

 never did much afterwards although freely man- 

 ured. The question then will be, is the tea lrnw 

 benefitting by the manure which the prematurely 

 weaken*! coffee trees were unable to take up. y 

 Sir J. B. Lawes, of agricultural fame, expressly 

 rules that the benefits of substantial manuring often 

 extend over twenty years. Sinniapitiya, the property 

 of the O. B. C. creditors, close by, promises to be 

 auother Muriawatta in success but with more diversi- 

 tied products. The question is asked why old Atgalla 

 with its equally gooel lay of laud uud, possibly soil, 

 on the other side, has not been takeu in hand ; 

 but this only brings us face to face with the " thousand 

 of acres " which the " old Colonist " V. A. says he 

 can point to, as good as Mariawatta, in Kaduijanawa, 

 Allagalla and the region thereabout for tea. Our 

 companions were certainly loud in praise of much 

 of the soil between Gampola and Allagilla : finer 

 paddy straw or better fruit trees are not found any 

 where else upcountry. (liy the way, has anyone else 

 noticed the resemblance between the giassy hills 

 on this side of Gampolx to the l»ad and coal hills 

 of L'inaikshire as pointed out to us by "Logie?"). — 

 But we are bound to say that if there are encour- 

 agements to keep goo 1 coffee intact, we heard and 

 saw enough upcountry to show the foolishness of 

 cultivating miserably poor worn-out coffee. Apart 

 from the utter ruin wrought in coffee in Matale 

 and KaduganDawa, by bug (has this pest anywhere 

 touched tea?) a Puseellawa planter was clear that 

 his proprietors had sacrificed large annual profits 

 derived from Cinchona by spending it on effee 

 which gave no return. Many old plantations have, it 

 seems, yielded bark enough of late years to pay 

 well, had the outlay on non-paying coffee been 

 stopped. But then ' May not the coffee in some of 

 these cases, yet come round as en the typical Dolosbagie 

 estate we have mentioned,' will be the question asked. 

 However, if we are to satisfy " Moderation, " we 

 must go higher up and deal directly with tea. Messrs. 

 Forbes, Aspland, Grigg and Blaoklaw have within 

 the past few days, given us very favourable accounts 

 of the growth and promise, aye and yield of young 

 tea in Ambagammuwa, Lower Dikoya, Upper and 

 Lower Maskeliya respectively. Of the good yield in 

 these directions there can be no doubt and improve- 

 ment in preparation after the pattern set by Galla- 

 boelde and Blackstone, will also go on. We are 

 pleased to learn that Mr. VVm. Rollo and Mr. John 

 Walker, now on a visit to Ceylon, have expressed them- 

 selves well satisfied with our tea prospects. 



Higher up still, we had an opportunity— though only a 

 brief one, — of marking the really wonderful flush on the 

 vigorous and luxuriant tea-bushes covering the Abbots- 

 ford fields at 5,000 feet and upwards. The figures 

 recently given by the manager must convince even 

 " Moeleration " that there is more in tea at a high 

 elevation than he had suppe.sed. Iu the neighbour- 

 hood of Nuwara Eliya we had the opportunity of 

 going carefully through several tea fields, not of large 

 extent but sufficient to enable a judgment to be 

 formed on the question before us. £ome 36 acres 

 under the small-leafed, shrubby but hardy China plant 

 on Hazlewood, eastward of the Plains, on an exposed, 

 rather bleak, and by no means fertile spot, are giving 

 satisfactory returns up to and in excess of 300 lb. 

 per acre although wi'lely planted aud hitherto, not 

 regularly plucked. On this easy lay of land, and 

 with a slow growth of weeds, the Assam system of 

 digging iu the grass and weeds three or four times 

 a year is adopted, with a swing in working, and 

 great benefit apparently to the tea trees. 



