to 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[July i, 1S85. 



habit of gettiDg up early in the morning, at tlie 

 very time when the game poacher ia busiest, and this 

 has driven them to "fresh fields and pastures new " : 

 indeed, during the last three years, 1 have only 

 twice seen evidence of the presence of poachers. A 

 large farmer in Scotland, and father of a worthy 

 Kandy citizen, told me that the Ground Game Act had 

 been s curie to farmers, as it granted leave to thoir 

 Bons to shoot hares and rabbits, and they would do 

 nothing else now, and this just led to worse, as the 

 carta belonging to game-dealers went round the 

 country and bought the game from these boys. Since 

 I was told .this, I have seen this evil in full awing, 

 and I agree with what the old gentleman said, that 

 a plague of rabbits is pretty bad, but a plague of 

 ne'er-do-weel boys would be much worse. 



How often have I heard old planters — now farmers at 

 home — say, that if they only had a gang of coolies, how 

 differently would they get on with their work, and how 

 much more pleasantly than with the stupid bumpkins 

 that are nowadays turned out by the school-boards 

 aa farm servants — louts that have just been taught 

 enough to make them believe that they are very 

 clever, but have not received sufficient education to 

 let them understand what utter idiots they are. There 

 are still many of the old race of farm-servants to 

 be met with, shrewd and hard-headed, but who have 

 not been educated to any great extent beyond the 

 three r'a and it is a real pleasure to speak with 

 any one of these, as they are so superior to the rising 

 generation. When that old race of farm-servants 

 dies out, it will be almost impossible to get their 

 places filled as grieves, cattlemen, &a,, the rising 

 generation being quite unsuited for such work, they 

 having never learned to supervise men nor caring to 

 make themselves acquainted with every work belong- 

 ing to a farm. A coolie learns every variety of work 

 connected with a coffee estate, but a farm servant 

 only learns a few of the duties on a farm ; he may 

 attend to a pair of horses, plough with them or drive 

 a reaping-machine with them, but could he reap with 

 a scythe, shear a sheep, or milk a cow ? Certainly 

 not : he leaves the general knowledge of farming to 

 the old school of labourers, and he ia content with 

 having passed the school board standards and been 

 shown the way to look after a pair of horses. Thf se 

 are the men who, going out to the colonies with large 

 ideas of their own abilities, lind themselves snubbed 

 by the colonials, who are obliged to learn now to 

 do everything for themselves, and who don't under- 

 stand a man who cau't put his hand t) anything 

 and everything, and so the deluded farm-labourer of 

 the present day comes home again, and seeks to 

 forget his colonial career in the more congenial work 

 of acting the part of a machine, without any idea of 

 why he ia ordered at one time of yeir to take his 

 horses and plough, and at another time to cart out 

 manure : it is nothing to him the why or the where- 

 fore, so long as he gets his pay, and that it is 

 •uificient for him to indulge in a periodical spree. 

 That is the farm-servant of nowadays at home, and 

 any old Ceylon man that ever I met has agreed 

 with me in thinking, that, for working, intelligence 

 and gratitude, the Malabar cooly is decidedly the 

 superior of the two. Cosmopolite, 



Tea Driebs : " The Cry is Still they Come ! " — 

 We were one of a party who inspected an invention 

 by Mr. Charles Shand for drying tea, which we 

 agreed in terming an improved " Chulah," a horizontal 

 flue being the equivalent of the numerous charcoal 

 lires of former times. We intended to have written 

 a full notice of the apparatus, but we must 

 give the precedence to the details of mail news. One 

 gr@at^ merit of the new dri^r is its cheapness. 



THE CEYLON BOTANIC GAKDENS : DR 

 ^ TRIMEN'S REPORT FOR 1SS4. 

 Although in Dr. Trimen's latest report, there is 

 nothing sensational, the contents show that good 

 and useful work has been done, not only at 

 Peradeniya, hut at Hakgala, Henaratgoda and away 

 near the site of the ancient capital of Ceylon af 

 Anuradhapura. Although the rapid rise of tea and 

 cacao is recorded, and the bright hopes founded on 

 "new ijroducts" indicated, yet reference has had to 

 be made to the decadence of coffee under the ac 

 cumulated ravages of fungus, grub and bug. The 

 effect of the consequent prevailing depression is 

 shown ia the lessened sales of plants generally, while 

 it is complained that at Hakgala extra expense is 

 incurred from the necessity of renewing supplies of 

 plants for which demand has ceased, but which may 

 again be called for. Ceylon is now in the transition 

 period from coffee to tea as the staple production 

 of the island, and the sudden and complete glving- 

 out of the old product over large areas in the 

 Kandy and Matale diatricte, is this year a sore 

 trial to many who hoped with the proceeds of 

 sales of coffee to "plant up" their land with tea. 

 Dr. Trimen's notices of the Morada and Verde Cali- 

 sayas, as well of cinchonas generally, will be read 

 with interest, while cacao in its varieties is ex- 

 haustively treated. If the euterprize of Ceylon planters 

 has resulted ia low prices for bark, such as in many 

 cases cannot possibly remunerate the growers, there is 

 such comfort as ia available from the fact that humanity 

 ia the giiiuer by the large supply li quinine available 

 at very cheap ratea, The danger is that Ceylon 

 planters will go ahead so rapidly aa to brinjj; about 

 similar results with tea. Tea, however, is not a 

 medicine, but a must useful and acceptable article of 

 food, so tliat the danger will piobably be averted : 

 at any rate it is far distant. The meteorological 

 returns from the gardens below the vast brow of 

 Hakgala are very interesting, and, unless 1SS4 was 

 an exceptional year as regarda temperature as well 

 as rainfall, we have stroug proof of the superior 

 geniality ol^ the climate on the eastern side of the 

 Nuwara Eliya table-land, as compared with the 

 region to the west. As the result of very careful 

 observations taken by the late Mr. Edward Heelis, 

 a mean temperature of C5° was established at 4,000 

 feet altitude ia Dimbula. Hakgala ia nearly 1,000 

 feet higher (the difference between 4,')00 and 5,581 

 feet being exactly 9S1), but the mean temperature of 

 the loftier position for la?t year was only one degree 

 lower than the mean of the Dimbula station. Between 

 Dimbula at 4,600 feet with 03° mean temper- 

 ature and Nuwara Eliya at G,200 with 57° mean 

 temperature, the fall is 8°, or at the rate of 1* for 

 every 200 feet ascent. Or, ti take the reverse : in 

 going down from Nuwara Eliya to Langdale in Dim- 

 bula, a warmer climate is gained only at the rate of 

 1° for every 200 feet descent ; but in going down from 

 Nuwara Eliya to Hakgala a degree of heat is actually 

 gained for every 90 feet of descent ! The dilference is 

 very great, and no doubt it largely accounts for the 

 success with which peaches and plums are grown 

 by Mr. Cotton in New Gal way, a distiict which lies 

 close to Hakgala, but at a lower level and there- 

 fore still warmer. It would stem, however, that 

 Dimbula has the more equable climate, in being less 

 liable to extreme cold. In ten years in Dimbula 



