iga 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [September i, 1885. 



Against coppicing 2 feet or so from tlie 

 ground, my reasous are the following : — I have seen 

 the two ditfertut ways (ione on two adj lining estates, 

 and the resulting shoots from trees coppiced near 

 the root give, for the same age, a better growth. 

 (2) A proprietor tried the plan of leaving the stump 

 (2 feet) and gave it up, aud his reason he told me 

 was that it did not throw shoots so freely, and, be- 

 sides, a lot of them died out. (3) I suppose 

 " Cinchona" will allow that dead wood does harm 

 to trees. The high stump left dies oft" soon, as all 

 the bark ii shaved oft' ; it dne< some harm to the shoots. 

 The cost (10 c;ut3) of bark delivered at Colombo 

 was for shaving alone, no branch bark or coppicings 

 were included. B. E. 



CROTOX OIL TREES : CULTIVATION AND 

 DEMAND FOR SEED. 



Polgahawela, 30th July 1SS5. 



Sib, — The following opinion of Messrs. Moore & Co., 

 wholesale druggists, London, as to the demand for 

 croton oil seeds m.ay be of interest to those of your 

 readers who have gone in largely for this product 

 as a separate cultivation. Grown as a shade for 

 cocoa, a small return will satisfy ; but as a venture 

 by itself I doubt if it will pay. Provided there is 

 a demand for it, at 203 it would pay, but I fear 

 in a few years there may not be a sale for all that 

 is exported. Evidently the extract in the T. A. as 

 to the oil being used for dressing woollens must be 

 a mist ike. —Yours, WILLIAM JARDINE. 



Extract. 



In reply to yours of the 16th June re croton oil tree, I 

 find the supplies of late have been rather larger than the 

 requirements, aud price has fallen from 50s to 40s per cwt. 

 I should not recommend exteusive planting, but oO to 

 100 biigs at a time would sell fairly well. 



(Signed) Feakcis Mooke. 



Coffee and Tea in Coorg. — Mercira, 14th July. — To- 

 wards the latter end of uext week planting should be com- 

 pleted, and it should prove most successful. The weather 

 has been unprecedented since the 2ud of June, at which 

 date the monsoou may be said to have burst. There have 

 been showers and continuous rain ever siuce, uutil Satur- 

 day the 11th, when the clouds lifted aud blue sky was seen 

 for a few hours. There are complaints in South Courg, 

 of great shortness of labor, and conseijuently those estates 

 are sutYering now. Toere are the borer trees untended no 

 fresh supplies or young plants got in, during the first 

 ranis, and weeds grow rampant, which unless quickly got 

 under, aud light brought into the lower branches, there 

 will be very little crop to gather later on ; for the leaves 

 quickly rot and dropoff, and the tips of the br.inches dying 

 off, speedily kills the branch back. Much of this result 

 from the policy pursued toward the end of last season, 

 when labor was ruthlessly cut down to avoid further outlay of 

 money ; successive changes of management, and a general 

 air of insecurity has, no doubt, aft'ectei the cooly maistries, 

 who will not come in with their contracted gangs of 

 labor. Some men have sent as far as Vellore and Bangalore 

 for coolies to work the estates, and from the West Coast, 

 large gangs of men from Tellicherry, principally, are on 

 their way up to seek contracts. I have seen two clearings 

 being planted up with tea plants, 4ft. by 4ft. as none has 

 been grown before, the experiment is looked forward to 

 with interest; as tea is still a little regarding profit, 

 behind coffee, plants have been quincunxed with the tea- 

 seedlings, so that at the end of two years, one can be taken 

 out. Tea is evidently indigenous to Coorg, for in the 

 forest. I have seen trees fifteen to twenty feet high, and 

 well-known to the Coorg villagers, who use it in sickuess 

 to allay fevers, by pruning the leave, .and then brewing 

 them, drinking the tea, when it is as hot as can be swallowed. 

 I have seen a tree of " Magarippa " coffee in bearing, 

 which, for its age, is short of stature, not robust, and is not 

 so good a lUutasau average Coorg coffee tree ; the fruit 

 will not bo ripe until November next. — Madras Standard, 

 July22ud. 



Variegated Tea Leaves. — A correspondent writes : 

 — " I send you by this post a branch with strange-looking 

 leaves on it taken from a bush in the middle of a field of 

 tea raised from Assam seed ; it seems to flush as well as 

 the rest of the tea round about it : can you tell me what 

 it is ? " It is tea, with variegated leaves : a common oc- 

 currence. The gentleman to whom we referred the 

 branch writes : — " The following lines cnpied from Bal- 

 four's Class Book of Botany will probably a6rnrd the in- 

 formation your correspondent asks for; — 'Variegation 

 in leaves is produced either by an alteration in the green 

 chromule. or chlorophyll, or by the presence of air in 

 certain foliar cells. * • ♦ The causes of variegation are 

 stated to be disease in the cellular ti-sue produced by 

 climate and soil, hybridization, fertilizitiou with various 

 coloured pnllen, and grafting.'" 



Sunflowers as Fpei,. — A correspondent of the 

 Dakota Farmer, after having tried "turf," coal wood 

 and sun-flowers, has settled upon the last named as 

 the cheapest and best for treeless Dakota. He says ; 

 "I grow one acre of them every year, and have 

 plenty of fuel for one stove the whole year round, and 

 U'^6 some in another stove besides. I plant them in 

 hills the same as corn (only three seeds to the hill), and 

 cultivate same as corn. I cut them when the leader 

 or top flower is ripe, and let them lay on the ground 

 top or three days ; in that time I cut off all the seed- 

 heads, which are put into an open shed with a floor in 

 it, the same as a corn-crib ; the stalks are then hauled 

 home and packed in a common shed with a good roof 

 on. When cut in the right time the stalks when dry 

 are as hard as oak, and make a good hot fire, while the 

 seed-beads with seeds in, make a better fire than the 

 best hard eo.al. The seed being very rich in oil it 

 will warm better and burn longer, bushel for bushel, 

 than bard coal. The sunflower is very hard on land. 

 The piece of ground selected to plant on should be 

 highly enriched with mannres.* In the great steppes 

 (prairie region in the interior of Russia and iu Tartary) 

 where the winters are more sevirethan h're iu Dakota, 

 the sunflowers are, and have been for centuries past, 

 the only kind of fuel used." — Maciay .t'andard. 



Copra. — One of the chief exports of Fiji, as most of 

 our readers are aware, is copra : and, although the 

 trade in this article has assumed large dimensions of 

 late years, it is felt that a much larger business might 

 be done if some inventive genius would manufacture 

 a machine which would cut out the kernel of the 

 coconut. At present the cutting is done entirely by 

 haul with a six-inch knife, and this, as may be imag- 

 ined, is a very si iw process. Messrs F R. Yarte&Co, 

 of Fiji, have called upon Americm inventors to aid 

 the owners of coconut plantations in the manufacture 

 of copra, and wa desire to bring the subject before 

 British nmnufacturers. The firm in question, in their 

 letter tn the Scientific American, state; — "The machine 

 wnuld be r- quired to cut out the kernel of the nut 

 just as it falls from the tree, but with the outer ihusk 

 on. We could split them open as we do now, with 

 an axe (at present we have no use for either husk or 

 shell, except for fuel). It must be adapted to cut nuts 

 of variable size, as coconuts vary very much iu size 

 and shape, some being quite round and others oval 

 shape aud .lU siz^s, simple in const''uction, and strong 

 wi'hout being heavy, as it would be worked by black 

 bibour. The motive power could be either hand or 

 foot. It would not matter what sizi or shape it cut the 

 kernel out, as long as it cuts it iu solid pieces, the 

 size we cut out by hand is about three quarter* of an 

 inch thick by about three inches Innj. If sucli a 

 machine could he made, a large number would be ordered, 

 if not too expensive, as our principal produc; of export 

 is dried coconut (called cobera or oop'a), and every 

 planter would have some. — European Mail. 



* "That's so," as out American friend siys. — Ed. 



