June i, 1885.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



877 



has showu that tho effects of the application of 

 cattle mauure to the soil, in the temperate climate 

 of Britain, have been evident for a score of years 

 subsequent to the application. Now most of our 

 old coffee plautat'ons which have been thirty or 

 forty years in existence and are now being converted 

 into tea plantations, have had cattlo and other 

 manures applied to the soil for a score of years 

 or more, and the question is, what proportion of 

 fertilizing matter is retained by the soil of such 

 estates, in the face of tropical combustion, tropical 

 wash and the demauds of successive crops of coffee 

 and also of leaves,' latterly to supply the want 

 created by Hemiltia vastatrix ? We have been 

 asked with much anxiety, in the course of our 

 travels, whether we could guarantee the success of 

 tea on the soil of old and rather worn coffee 

 estates. We could have no hesitation in answering 

 such a question had it been preferred in regard to 

 such old coffee land as that which we saw on 

 Elkaduwa, on the Messrs. Hadden's estates, on 

 Kandanuwara and places with similar soil. In other 

 cases, and they are many, where the surface soil has 

 been burnt or washed away, and the sub-soil 

 did not look very promising, we naturally hesit- 

 ated, only pointing to the wonderful growth of the 

 tea plant even in such soil. Success in the cases 

 referred to was explained as meaning an average 

 yield of 300 lb. of tea per annum, and we know 

 that, by the aid of cattle manure, that return has been 

 obtained on soil in the Knuckles district which had 

 previously borne coffee for half a century. The yield 

 referred to has been obtained from comparatively 

 young tea, so that probably, at from five to eight years 

 of age, 300 lb. per acre may be obtained from the 

 nnmanured soil of old coffee plantatiors. But if the 

 Boil of a coffee estate is naturally poor and much 

 washed, there seems little doubt that manuring must 

 be resorted to. And we know that to ammoniacal 

 manure, such as cattle-dung and other excreta, tea 

 responds after a wonderful fashion. It is, we suppose, 

 no longer a question that it did not pny, or but in 

 rare cases, to keep cattle for the sole purpose of 

 obtaining manure for coffee, and we should have 

 thought that what held good of coffee would be true 

 of tea. But evidently the question iB not so simple as 

 we supposed, for a gentleman, who has retained a good 

 establishment of cattle from the era of coffee, told us a 

 few days back that he intended to add to his estab- 

 lishment. As we saw old Madulkelly in the Knuckles 

 recently, passing from the character of what was once 

 a most profitable coffee estate, to the new and we 

 truBt equally profitable phase of a tea plantation, we 

 could not help recalling the grand cattle establishment, 

 which in 1856 (nearly a generation ago, alas !) Mr. 

 Donald Stewart (the then superintendent, subsequently 

 "King of Coorg") took justifiable pride in showing 

 us, and we could not and cannot help believing that 

 on Madulkelly and the many places similarly treated 

 tea now planted or being planted will reap largely 

 the benefit of manurial matter placed in the soil years 

 ago for tho benefit of coffee. May not the powerful 

 taproot of the tea plant be capable of pumping up more 

 than mere watery moisture from the lower strata which 

 it reaches ? As is well-known, tea is being largely 

 planted not only on old coffee estates, which have the 

 advantages of roads, drains, bungalows and stores 

 (the latter easily adapted) in readiness, and on chenas 

 where coffee could be expected to give only a couple 

 of crops, but on pitanas or grass land. There are 

 patanas and patanas, of course, and on good patana, 

 there can be no doubt, tea will do well. But iu 

 Dolosbage a crucial experiment has been tried. 

 Around the nucleus of an old coffee estate tea has 

 been regularly planted on patana of all descriptions, 

 to the extent of 300 acres. This enterprize is in the 



hands of a Colombo firm who must know what they 

 are about and what can be done by means of liberal 

 manuring. As 3 rule, however, tea is only cultivated 

 on choice, good soiled patana of which there is much 

 on the western side of the mountain zone, while it 

 specially abounds on the eastern. Tho scope thus 

 afforded for tho extension of tea, where coffee was 

 never thought of, is very great. I have been asked 

 not only to guarantee the success of tea on old coffee 

 land but to settle the question of the suitability of 

 indigenous Assam tea plants for high altitudes. 

 Besides questions addressed to me personally, the follow, 

 ing letter has been forwarded to me : — 



Lindula, 6th April 1885. 

 Sir, — Would you, or any of your readers, kindly give us 

 the benefit of your experience as to indigenous tea ? how 

 it answers in Ceylon ? up to what height it will flush satis- 

 factorily ? and how it compares with high-class hybrid? 

 I have searched the Tropical Agriculturist through, but 

 cannot (wonderful to relate !) find anything definite on the 

 subject in that compendium of useful agricultural know- 

 ledge.— Yours faithfully, A Proprietor. 



We have several times stated, and we think our 

 statements must have been transferred to the Tropical 

 Agriculturist, that what we know of indigenous tea 

 in Ceylon is that plants from seeds which were sent 

 to us from Assam as indigenous made slow growth 

 in comparison with first-class hybrid, at an elevation 

 of 5,000 feet. But "planting weather," a most im- 

 portant element in the matter, may have been against 

 us. We know that a patch of indigenous has done well 

 at about 2,500 feet in Ambagamuwa, and respecting 

 this we have no doubt Messrs. Leechman & Co. will 

 give information. During onr journeying we saw 

 indigenous tea twice : first on the Messrs. Hadden's 

 land, at an elevation not much under 3,000 feet, we 

 should think ; and again on Mr. Fraser's land near 

 Matale, at about 1,100 feet. In both cases the growth 

 was vigorous, although, as a consequence of drought, 

 the leaves had dropped from the points of the 

 branches. This, we were assured, would bo remedied 

 with the setting-in of rainy weather, when luxuriance 

 and progress would be very great. We could not 

 help noticing the uniform type of large corrugated 

 leaves in the case of these plants, so differ- 

 ent to that of even the highest class hybrids, where 

 there are great diversities in size and colour and 

 appearance of leaf, although the golden green tinge 

 prevails. While writing I recollect that I saw a 

 few fine well-grown indigenous tea trees, being grown 

 for seed bearers, on Gang Warily, but the elevation 

 at which they were growing could not have been 

 much above 2,000 feet. The only other fact I can 

 mention in regard to indigenous tea is that a gentle- 

 man interested in the question of its growth at a 

 high elevation visited Abbotsford recently, and ex- 

 pressed himself satisfied with the growth of plant 

 which to those connected with the estate have been 

 a disappointment. This seems the proper place to 

 mention that on Mr, Blackett's estate of Pen y-lan 

 in Dolosbage, I saw some of the original tea trees 

 either indigenous or first-class hybrid, grown by Mr. 

 Lewellyn nearly 40 years ago. A slip taken from 

 one of those trees about Beven years ago is now 

 itself a fine tall tree which has yielded and is 

 yielding abundance of seed. But in days not so long 

 gone by, so little appreciated was the enterprize 

 which Mr. Lewellyn came so near to establish, that 

 a good many of the fine old tea trees were cut down 

 and converted into rafters for buildings ! It j 8 

 curious to note how frequently an enterprize or a 

 discovery — for instance, the finding of gold in Aus- 

 tralia — is left in the tentative and doubtful stacre 

 until the ?et time in the order of Providence has 

 come. The success of tea in Ceylon was fu]I v 

 assured just as the fatal crisis in the history of 



