46 



THE TROPICAL AGKICULTURIST, 



[July i, 1S85. 



SQUIRRELS AND THEIR HABITS. 



A correspondent sends us an interesting account 

 of the doings of one of our small Ceylon squirrels. 

 He saw it ripping up the long foxglove-like 

 flowers of a foreign but now common climber in 

 Ceylon, and supposed by Mr. W. Ferguson to be 

 the Lophospermum eruhesctns, in order to get at the 

 nectar they contained, whilst our correspondent at 

 first imagined the tiny rodent was eating his peaches. 

 Here in Colombo the three-striped " ground" squirrel, 

 BO-called, but which affects our palm trees and houses, 

 is constantly seen eating seeds, nibbling at flowers, 

 &c. It is one of our most familiar and bold little 

 mammals. By a curious coincidence we heard recently 

 about a fight between one of them and a blood- 

 sucker, Caloles versicolor, but which of them was 

 the aggressor we do not know. We have seen 

 the palm squirrels at Colombo not only pilfering 

 gram meant for poultry but actually feeding on white- 

 ants which bad climbed up the root step of 

 coconut trees, so that this amusing little creature seems 

 to be omnivorous. 



Habits of the Common Squirrel. 



"Yesterday, I witnessed to me a new and 

 most interesting habit of the common striped 

 ground squirrel, which may interest you. I saw 

 a little fellow on a large peach tree, which was 

 festooned with a common but beautiful creeper. I do 

 not know its name. Naturally thinking the 'beautiful 

 ■wretch' was after my peaches. — I like the birds and 

 little beasts to have a share of my fruit, but really 

 sometimes they do not seem to think that I want 

 any ! — Just to see what it was up to I watched ist 

 movements a few feet over my head and quite un- 

 disturbed. It seemed so busy that it had not noticed 

 me. It was evidently 'on the feed,' but seeing it 

 pass a good fat peach at once attracted my attention, 

 and it was evidently busy in some way with the fox- 

 glove-like flowers of the creeping plant. I saw it 

 visit several before I could make out what it was 

 doing. Turning a small telescope on it, I saw that each 

 time it went to the base of a blossom its little head 

 gave a quick jerk upwards, and then was quite motion- 

 less to all appearance for a few seconds. A blossom 

 falling near me, after it was operated on, I quietly 

 picked it up. It was not a fully expanded one ; there 

 clearly enough was to be seen marks which fully ex- 

 plained the intelligent little creature's movements to 

 get at the nectar at the base of the flower. It had 

 seized the calyx with its sharp cutting teeth and deip 

 enough to catch hold of a portion of the blossom, 

 and with the jerk noticed laid open the base of the 

 blossom, sufficiently to insert its tongue and suck the 

 honey out. I watched it operate on 30 or 40 blossoms 

 in a very few minutes, and saw, with the help of 

 the glass, its tongue inserted quite clearl;'. It was so 

 expert at the work that it never missed laying the base 

 of the flower open at Jlrsi shot. About a third of 

 the blossoms fell : the older blossoms had a piece 

 bitten quite out near the calyx, the latter sometimes 

 not injured ; younger blossoms invariably had more or 

 less of the calyx cut up. I enclose you a specimen 

 of each, and no doubt you can tell me the name of 

 the plant, which is like a weed here, but I expect not 

 a native, I enclose three mature blossoms to show how 

 clearly each blossom is bitten exactly in the same 

 Tray. Xhe wretch is at it again this inorniog, throw- 

 ing eoorea of bloeeoma down," 



PLANTING NOTES FROM UVA. 



Haputale, 12th June 1885. 



The last month was a busy one up here from all ac- 

 counts, crop gathering being iii full swing during 

 my absence in Colombo; the final rounds of picking are 

 now progressing, and I am happy to be able to report the 

 most cheering accounts of estimate being realized and in 

 many cases being greatly exceeded, not by liiindreds but 

 by thoumnds of bushels of jiarchment, which most satis- 

 factory result is said especially to have been experienced 

 on all the higher estates above the Pass, and I am also 

 glad to learn that those who had spring crop to gather 

 on estates below the Pass have been equally fortunate ; 

 so that my earUer predictions when drought and leaf- 

 disease were prevalent and threatened the loss of much 

 crop, especially on estates below the Pass, have most 

 happily been disappointed and estimates are said to have 

 been gathered in full. That some crop was lost from 

 drought and leaf-disease cannot be denied, and it has been 

 mentioned to me that but for these unforeseen calamities 

 estimates in many cases would have been cloiihled., and 

 tu-icc the quantity estimated would have been gathered 

 this season. From the Badulla side I have heard that one 

 estate has actually gathered double its estimate^ and others 

 have got from 2,000 to 4,000 bushels parchment overestimate, 

 whilst in some of the pubUc papers I saw it recently 

 stated that the Uva Company's estates were this season 

 giving 1,000 cwt. of crojj over estimate. How much more 

 crop they would have given it they had not destroyed 

 some 200 acres or more of fine bearing coffee, to make 

 room for tea, I leave you, Mr. Editor, to guess. 



The " tea mania " has now fairly set in here, and 

 many estates have extensive tea nurseries and some are 

 planting tea under the coffee and cinchona trees. 

 Oh ! ye gods of agriculture, how in the name of com- 

 monsense do you expect all three products to thrive in 

 the same six feet square of soil '( If you are in a hurry 

 to get rich I will also suggest your sticking in the same 

 plot a plantain tree, a few briujals, tomatoes, et hoc genus 

 oinne ! If a word of warning from an old stager would 

 be acceptable to my brother-planters, I would say : " Don't 

 plant tea amongst your good coffee, but stick to the old 

 and generous King. Treat him kindly and regally and he 

 will respond to your affection by good crops for a good 

 many years yet to come. If you want to plant tea, do 

 so on your spare land or buy patana or chena lands, of 

 which there are thousands and thousands of acres all 

 around you in Uva, with soil quite as good as on most 

 of the tea clearings I saw in my travels through the Kclani 

 Valley, Yakdessa, Ambagamuwa, Kotmale and Dimbula. 

 After a residence of nearly 30 years in Uva I can say that 

 the rainfall here is ample. The present season's weal her 

 is more like the good old times when I commenced plant- 

 ing here early in the fifties. Last month the rainfall was 

 12-21 inches distributed over 20 days, and since Ist June 

 to loth iust. there have been 7 wet days totalling 306 inches. 



HOW TO PLANT AND PREPARE TEA : 



THE FATHEKS OF THE INDIAN TEA INDUSTRY 



INTERVIEWED: II. ME. WM. ROBERTS. 



Mr. AVin. Roberts, who has for many years so succcbe- 

 fuUy steered the affairs of the Jorebaut Tea Company, 

 Limited, into its present eminently satisfactory position, 

 first entered on his Indian experiences in the year ISJl. "The 

 question of sending rut a really properly qualified chendst 

 to analise the tea under various stages of manufacture is a 

 very important one. Our experience of experts in comicotion 

 with investigations relating to tea-blights has not been 

 satisfactory, in fact, very raueh the reverse, hut that is a 

 totally ditferent braucb of science, as you know. Yes ; 

 and their failure might have been foretold, as it is a ques- 

 tion affecting the most fundamental laws of nature ; as 

 we know that in nature, given the requisite conditions of 

 life in siUBciently attractive quantity and quality and 

 ' pest ' life will be developed in proportion to the ex- 

 tent of the attraction offered to it. Having planted large 

 tracts with tea, where hitherto only odd bushes existed, 

 we had but to expect that those forms of life which are 

 fpeciall}' attracted \>y tea buibes would multiply uuder 



