934 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 



[June 



thus forms the white wax of commerce. The Chinese 

 mix Bome of this wax in tallow candles to give 

 them firmer consistency. The candles are dipped in 

 white wax, and thus acquire a sheath which pie- 

 vents "puttering." An inferior kind of wax is 

 squeezed from the boiled insects themselves, and they 

 are then given to the pigs. Mr. Hosie hrs succeeded 

 in sending home to Kew Gardens tome specimens of 

 the tree on which the insects originally grow, as well 

 as bunches of seeds from the wax tree lo which the 

 insects are transferred. He had not with him any 

 microscope powerful enough to enable him to discover 

 how the wax insects feed or in what way they de- 

 posit the wax. He found, however, that they con- 

 struct galleiies or passages in the wax deposit itself, 

 which reach from the bark to the outer surface of 

 the wax. He has seen them thickly studded on 

 the bark and apparently motionless. — New York 

 Hour, March 21st. 



■ -♦ 



L'EYLON UPCOUNTRY PLANTING REPORT. 



CEYLON'S NEWEST PRODUCT, COCA : GBEAT DEMAND FOB 

 SEED — IIOW TO KEEP DOWN THE UEEI'-BOOIC — A LARGE 

 OBDER. 



11th May, 18S5. 



The seeds of our newest product, coca, are now 

 being distributed from our Royal Botanic Gardens 

 at Peradeniya, at a charge of twenty-five cents for fifty. 

 The applications I hear are very numerous, and al- 

 though the plant is said to grow best from an elev- 

 ation of 2,000 feet and upwards, it has every chance 

 I fancy of being tried at almost every altitude. Those 

 who have any experience of this plant tell me that 

 it grows very well among rocks, planted in the crevices, 

 with not t o dense a shade ; whereas in the open 

 it runs more to seed than leaf. A.3 it is for the value 

 of its leaf that it will l.e cultivated, this hint may 

 be worth attention. 



The puwer of the coca leaf for arresting hunger must 

 in time, I fancy, make it a favourite vegetable with 

 the economical planter. It will be a final solution 

 to th'3 problem of how to keep down the beef-book. 

 And yet I don't know. The late hard times have 

 developed in many an ability for being able to "knock 

 along" on so little that to reduce further would cert- 

 ainly mean collapse. I once heard a planter give a 

 baziar order tor half-a-pound of beefsteak and a box 

 of matches, at the same time hauding twelve-and-a- 

 half cents to his servant so as to have all the advant- 

 ages of a cash transaction ! Ir would be very unsafe 

 I think for a man of that kind to have coca to browse 

 on, besides runuiug the risk of spoiling what appeared 

 to me then, and appeurs to me still, a noble speci- 

 men of the art of economical living. PEPPJSKCOEN, 



CARE IN SELECTING SEED. 

 In the T. A. of January last, on page 509, there 

 is a letter signed " S." on the subject of the want 

 of care in selecting tea seed, in which the writer 

 reminds planters that other seeds require care in 

 selecion, as well as tea. The remarks made in that 

 letter are all undoubtedly true, and every planter 

 oudit to know that such is the case by this time ; 

 but planters have a habit of allowing tiie dead past 

 to bury its dead, and, although tiny probably all are 

 quite willing to admit that the choice of immature 

 and unhealthy seed was as much to blame as any- 

 thing else, in the bringing of leaf-disease on coffee, 

 and in damping off' in cinchona beds, still we find 

 them lather backward iu taking the lesson to heart 

 in the matter of tea seed. About the year 1870, there 

 was such a bustle to get coffee estates planted up, 



that any sort if plants weramade uso of : from weedy 

 estates, native garde s and out of the jungle, plants 

 that having been hait'-choked had grown long, spindly 

 and unhealthy. Naturally they fell an easy prey to 

 leaf-disease, and once th it pest was well established, 

 the older and stronger coffee trees became infected, 

 and now the poor old " King " may be said to be 

 n articulo mortis. Tien came the rush for cinchona 

 and any sort of seed was bought up. I remember a 

 /neighbour of mine who had some trees about four 

 feet high, which suddenly began to get sick ; then 

 seed in great quantities appeared on them (Nature 

 making an effort to reproduce herself) and he care- 

 fully had each of the bunches of seed put in a 

 gauze bag and thus secured the seed as it fell. The 

 trees ultimately dhd, and the seed was sown by him 

 in his nurseries, and in course of time it came up 

 and proceeded to damp off. Everything was blamed 

 by him except the right thing, viz., that the seed 

 was grown on unhealthy and immature trees. So far 

 Ceylon planters have been very fortunate with tea : 

 hey bought, in many cases, tea seed which no Assam 

 planter would have used, but their splendid climate 

 has pulled them through and the bushes have more 

 than astonished them. But I have never yet seen 

 tany comparison made of the yield from tea bushes 

 raised from the best seed, at say K150, and that from 

 seed which cost only P.30 amaund. If inferior seed 

 can grow into such bushes as are to be found in 

 Ceylon, surely the bushes grown from the best seed, 

 had it been planted in the same place, would have 

 done better. 



In farming at home, one learns the same lesson 

 with regard to the seed used : to plant potatoes 

 which were taken from the roots of unhealthy 

 plants or from plants that have heen pulled up as 

 soon as the potato disease began to show itself, 

 acd which of course were hardly ripe, would scarcelv 

 be a judicious thing to do, and my own impression is 

 that hnger-and-toe disease amongst turnips arises 

 as much from growing these vegetables from seed 

 taken from an unhealthy plant, instead of getting 

 fresh seed from some one who has not heen troubled 

 with the disease. I have known farmers who, have 

 built their coin into stacks before it was quite 

 dry, these gradually got heated and the grain became 

 discolored. This of course, reduces its value in the 

 eyes of the - grain merchant, and, rather than sell at 

 a lower rate than the price current, the farmer sows 

 it as seed next year, holding the idea that anything 

 is good enough for seed. Need 1 say that the germin- 

 atiug power is partially gone and tho crop therefrom 

 is, in consecjuence, not at alia go >d one. My grieve, 

 who has grown up boy and man on the farm, tells 

 me that it is all very well to say that a change of 

 seed is a good thing, but tho best crops that have 

 ever been grown ou the place have been from our 

 own grown corn. This I can easily account for. He 

 is a most careful man (the pity is that there are so 

 few like him), who never reaps till the grain is ripe 

 and never leaels till the sheaves are dry, and con- 

 sequently the giain is certain to be good seed. But 

 b have seen stacks steaming with heat, having been 

 tuilt when the sheaves were only partially dry, and 

 these, when pulled down, have had more the ap- 

 pearance of manure than uuthrasheel straw. Can you 

 wonder that the grain from this should turn out in- 

 different seed ! I\ow, if seed taken from unhealthy 

 turnips or grain taken from corn, which has been cut 

 when not quite ripe, result so unfavourably at home, 

 why should not the same thing obtain iu the matter 

 of tea and cinchona seed in Ceylon ? I think that 

 this is a subject to which sufficient attention is not 

 paid, audi have not the least doubt that the quality 

 of tho seed has much more to do with the return of 



